In a sentenceA sheriff called Hurricane could have been a long evening; Bill Paxton spares us
Criminals head from the city towards Star City, Arkansas, where Dale “Hurricane” Dixon (Bill Paxton) is the local sheriff. Their approach brings the threat of violence to the small town and draws Dixon into a pursuit shaped by tensions around race and sex. Cynda Williams plays Fantasia, alongside Billy Bob Thornton as Ray Malcolm and Michael Beach as Pluto. As the distance between the criminals and the law closes, personal histories and relationships complicate the chase. Dixon must contend with dangers that the town’s quiet reputation offers little help in understanding.
Carl Franklin’s crime thriller earns its tension by making us care who is in danger. Bill Paxton and Cynda Williams give it unusual feeling, despite some heavy-handed noir touches and an underexplored sheriff.
One False Move is an unusually humane crime thriller, and we recommend it despite some overemphatic direction. Carl Franklin works from a script by Tom Epperson and Billy Bob Thornton, following criminals towards a small Arkansas town and gradually giving the people more of our attention than the pursuit. That takes patience, but the human detail never feels like something to endure before the exciting business resumes. There is enough suspense to sustain the quieter passages without hurrying through them. The film runs 105 minutes.
Bill Paxton plays Dale “Hurricane” Dixon, the sheriff of Star City, with a naturalness that keeps the part from becoming a joke about provincial policing. A city-country thriller can do a great deal of lazy work with a supposedly simple local lawman. Paxton makes us interested in Dixon before the plot has explained why we should be, and he does not need to advertise the character’s importance. We wanted a little more of him, particularly where the writing suggests a complicated man and then lets the pursuit take priority.
Cynda Williams gives Fantasia a distress that does not disappear whenever the chase needs to move forward. We were moved by her. Williams makes us stay aware of the character’s pain while the suspense encourages us to think only about the next danger. Thornton’s Ray Malcolm and Michael Beach’s Pluto belong to the same convincing ensemble, with nobody apparently auditioning for a more conspicuous film. The script’s attention to racial and sexual inequality gives us more to consider when judging these people.
James L. Carter’s cinematography makes the shift from urban violence to rural Arkansas unsettling: the change of surroundings offers less relief than we expect. Gary T. New’s production design helps distinguish the two places without making the town seem safely detached from what we have seen. The contrast gives the pursuit a clear destination and makes us apprehensive about reaching it. Much of the unease comes simply from knowing that the criminals are approaching this small town.
Carole Kravetz Aykanian’s editing keeps the pursuit clear while allowing the performances enough time to register. We are not left impatiently waiting for the criminals whenever the film attends to Dixon, and Williams’s scenes do not feel like delays. The music by Derek Holt, Peter Haycock and Terry Plumeri helps sustain the unease, though we remember the actors more clearly than the score. The pacing gives us time to care about Dixon and Fantasia without losing track of the danger.
Some of Franklin’s noir touches are too emphatic, pressing for menace already present in the situation. We notice the effort, and that briefly weakens the unease. It is a small complaint, but this is a thriller in which unnecessary insistence is conspicuous. The genre’s familiar pleasures are here, including the anticipation of people meeting who should be kept well apart, and the performances give us good reason to dread those encounters.
Choose it for an evening when there is time to pay attention, not when a thriller is wanted to fill the background. The violence is a serious caveat, and the 18 certificate should settle any thought of casual family viewing. Paxton and Williams deserve to be watched without somebody checking another screen.
Most critics regard One False Move as a tense, character-driven thriller whose human relationships give familiar crime material unusual depth. Praise clusters around Franklin’s handling of suspense, the balance between noir and human drama, and performances that make the characters more than pieces in a pursuit. Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton and Cynda Williams receive particular attention, while several reviews value the way racial and sexual tensions emerge through the characters and the contrast between urban violence and rural Arkansas.
The spread is largely favourable, with reservations about execution rather than the film’s ambitions. The Independent offers the clearest dissent, finding the writing more assured than the direction and the later noir flourishes overdone. The Los Angeles Times also identifies cornball motifs and an underdeveloped sheriff, though it finds the suspense effective. These doubts sit alongside broader praise for the film’s pacing, emotional complexity and unexpected shifts.
Ebert calls it a great film and one of the best of the year that announces a gifted director. He singles out the way it shifts from crime story to human story driven by characters rather than plot devices.
Read the full review →Maslin praises the new director for delivering symmetry, surprise and detail that transcend a conventional crime story. She singles out the unusual interracial cast and complex character dynamics that lift the film above genre limits.
Read the full review →This is a cracking modern-day Western with neo-noir realism, where first-time director Franklin adeptly builds tension and balances the cast in a cat-and-mouse game revealing unexpected secrets. Cynda Williams delivers a riveting performance as a tortured soul in an emotionally complex thriller with an upbeat message.
Read the full review →Rainer finds the thriller mostly taut and sure-footed with effective suspense. He singles out the promising but underdeveloped Arkansas sheriff character as a highlight amid some cornball motifs.
Read the full review →The film stands out for its unpredictable narrative shifts between urban violence and rural Arkansas, blending film noir with racial and social tensions through strong town-country contrasts in the script. The directing is less assured than the writing, with overdone noir flourishes toward the end.
Read the full review →The critic calls it a superb modern thriller in the Jim Thompson mould, with criminals converging on a small Arkansas town for a High Noon-style showdown. Subtle asides on racial and sexual inequality, near-perfect performances and pacing, and consistent mood are singled out as strengths.
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1953 · A spare crime thriller that makes enforced proximity steadily harder to bear.
1963 · A criminal investigation opens into a precise examination of class and responsibility.
851998 · Another crime story where understanding ordinary people makes their choices more painful.
2003 · Provincial policing, uneasy humour and violence that refuses to remain comfortably distant.
2013 · Small-scale violence with consequences, and people painfully ill-equipped to manage them.
