Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
One LA night, Billy Bob Thornton’s Ray Malcolm, Cynda Williams’ Lila ‘Fantasia’ Walker, and Michael Beach’s Lane ‘Pluto’ Franklin murder six people while searching for a dealer’s stash of coke and cash. Jim Metzler and Earl Billings Detectives are on the case, and soon uncover links to Star City, Arkansas, so get in touch with the local five-oh.
That means talking to Bill Paxton’s Sheriff Dale ‘Hurricane’ Dixon, a hooting yahoo who’s excited to get some real police work done, not breaking up drunken home disputes. As it becomes clear that the perps are indeed heading that way, Fantasia having grown up in those parts, the LA detectives head out to Star City to lay a trap.
However, there may be more to our Sheriff than there appears on the surface, which admittedly would not be hard, and his history with Fantasia provides what I’m sure was intended as some complicating texture to the story in the final act.
While One False Move isn’t the worst of these neo-noirs we’ll speak of today, it’s not doing a lot for me, which is a shade disappointing given the reputation it appears to have garnered since its release. I don’t think I have any conceptual beef with the narrative, or the atmosphere which I suppose are the foundations of the genre, but a lot of the charm of a noir comes from the characters. Here, there’s too many cluttering up the place, to no avail, and the one that is most focused on, I do not buy in the slightest. Sorry Bill, but you are the first in an episode-long repeated motif of characters I cannot take seriously in the slightest. I guess you did such a good job slathering on the backwood hillbilly that it’s too much of an ask to buy any excavation of the character’s depth as the film comes to an end.
As for the rest of the gang, whether they come off better or worse is a matter of perspective. Most of them are given so much less to do that it’s not the actor’s fault they come across as one note sketches, particularly our trio of criminals that get no development at all for the amount of runtime they consume. I believe it’s Pluto who’s referred to multiple times as some sort of genius, which is something very much told not shown, and there’s a similar lack of meat to the bones of everyone else, particularly disappointing in the case of Cynda Williams’ character.
There’s an interesting story here somewhere, but for my money it takes place over the course of an hour long conversation between the Sheriff and Fantasia, and probably on a stage somewhere. As for the film, it turns out the real One False Move was watching it.