Carl Franklin makes crime thrillers worth watching for the people caught in them. We rate his patience with actors and his attention to the consequences of violence, though his insistence on menace can occasionally get in the way.
Fi1m perspective
In One False Move (1992), criminals head towards a small Arkansas town, and Carl Franklin makes time for the people who will meet them. Working from Tom Epperson and Billy Bob Thornton’s script, he sustains suspense without hurrying through the quieter passages. We felt an unusual dread because Bill Paxton and Cynda Williams made us care who was in danger. The human detail never feels like something to sit through before the thriller can get going again.
That film was his breakthrough after directing features for Roger Corman’s Concorde Pictures from 1989. Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), which he wrote and directed from Walter Mosley’s novel, starred Denzel Washington and gave Franklin’s crime cinema a period setting. Washington returned for the Florida-set thriller Out of Time (2003). Since the 2010s, Franklin has worked chiefly in television, including The Pacific and House of Cards. His television work also includes episodes of the David Fincher-produced Mindhunter.
Franklin favours precise framing and carefully arranged actor movement over a restless camera. That suits crime stories in which a person’s behaviour can do as much for the suspense as the immediate threat. His recurring interest in race, community and the differences between urban and rural life gives him reasons to stay with people whom a brisker thriller might hurry past. In One False Move, that attention makes the quieter passages worth watching, although the sheriff remains less fully explored than we would like.
There is a more visible fault when One False Move presses its noir touches too hard. The menace is already present in the situation, and Franklin’s extra insistence briefly weakens it by making us notice the effort. These moments are conspicuous in a film whose performances give us ample reason to worry without further encouragement. We still recommend it warmly, but a director this attentive to actors could sometimes trust them a little more. Start with One False Move, and give its conversations the same attention as its pursuit.
Biography
Carl Franklin is an American film and television director, screenwriter, producer and former actor. Born in Richmond, California, he studied at the University of California, Berkeley before training as a director at the AFI Conservatory, from which he graduated with an MFA in 1986. He began his career as a television actor in the 1970s and 1980s, with regular roles in series including The Fantastic Journey and The A-Team, before moving into directing.
Franklin's feature directorial debut, the 1992 crime thriller One False Move, brought him critical acclaim and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director. He went on to direct Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), Out of Time (2003) and One True Thing (1998). Since the 2010s his work has been primarily in television, with episodes of series including Rome (2005), The Pacific (2010), House of Cards (2013), Homeland (2011), Mindhunter (2017) and Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022).
