Aside from the vividly bleak atmosphere, Eve's performance is the main reason to invest any time "Cold Comes the Night," a pulpy and portentous title that reminded me of an old "Family Guy" joke about a terrible screenplay called "Death Spares Not the Tiger." Director and co-writer Tze Chun seems to have been be aiming for the sort of elevated B-movie material that made "Fargo" and "A Simple Plan" so great: movies in which regular folks get caught up in crimes and make one bad decision after another. But his characters lack the complexity of those superior films and his story (with co-writers Osgood Perkins and Nick Simon) feels too thin to be completely engrossing.
A de-glammed Eve is riveting and grounded throughout, though, as Chloe, a widow who runs a cheap motel along the highway where hookers and drug users are the primary visitors. Chloe stashes away as much cash as she can to provide for her daughter, Sophia (the talented-beyond-her-years Ursula Parker, who plays Louis C.K.'s younger daughter on "Louie"), with whom she shares a cramped apartment above the motel office. She also has the protection of crooked local cop Billy (Logan Marshall-Green), with whom she has some sort of romantic history.
Clearly, this is not the best environment in which to raise a child. A social services worker informs Chloe that if she can't find a more suitable home in two weeks, Sophia will have to live in foster care. Chloe's response: "I'd rather be dead," which establishes early on that this is a resilient, young woman who already has lived a life and built up some defenses.
She'll need them when Cranston's Topo stops in for a few hours of sleep. A veteran drug and cash mule, Topo is en route to the Canadian border with his squirrelly nephew and a duffel bag full of money to deliver. Because here's the deal: He's nearly blind, so he needs someone to drive him to assignments and help guide him to perpetuate the ruse that he's still fully functioning. This is actually a fascinating idea for a character: What DO you do with your life when you get too old and feeble for the crime business? It's also, unfortunately, an underdeveloped idea.
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