One False Move


1/4

Starring: Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Cynda Williams, Michael Beach

Rated R for Strong Violence and Language, and for Drug Content

I had high expectations for this movie.  Siskel and Ebert said it was one of the best movies of 1992, and it was a nominee for AFI’s Top 100 Thrills list.  I had heard not to expect a thriller, and I was open to something different, but certainly not something this dull.  The characters talk and talk, occasionally pausing for an act of savage violence or two, then resume talking.  The problem is that the characters are two-dimensional at best and nothing they say is particularly interesting.

Six people are dead in Los Angeles.  Two detectives, Dud (Jim Metzler) and McFeely (Earl Billings) are on the trail of the suspects, who, as evidence points out, are on their way to Arkansas.  The killers, which are compromised of the simple-minded and trigger-happy Ray Malcom (Thornton), the sadistic psychopath with a high IQ and a college degree named Pluto (Beach) and Ray’s girlfriend Fantasia (Williams), are on the run.  In an attempt to be one step ahead of the killers, the detectives fly to the small town of Star City, Arkansas to trap them.  There they enlist the help of the super chatty sheriff, Dale “Hurricane” Dixon (Paxton).  Then both parties play the waiting game until the inevitable meetup.

That’s the problem.  This is all set-up and resolution, and the filler isn’t interesting at all.  Sure, I suppose stuff happens, but it’s not compelling and it happens to characters I didn’t care about.

The acting is perfunctory; with a better script, some of the characters might have worked.  Billy Bob Thornton originates the dim-witted criminal he has played over and over again, while Michael Beach is sorely miscast as the psycho killer.  As a dramatic lead on a TV show, I could buy him.  But as a wannabe Hannibal Lecter, he’s about as menacing as Barney the Purple Dinosaur (who I guess is kind of creepy himself, but never mind).  Cynda Williams is strongly reminiscent of Lisa Bonet; she could have done well with better material.  Neither Metzler or Billings are interesting either.  The only one who works is Bill Paxton.  He’s funny, and so enthusiastic that he’s impossible not to like.  Yet, Paxton reaches into his well of talent and pulls out some dramatic chops that he’s rarely given the opportunity to show.

Carl Franklin has made a number of passable thrillers (only one of which I have actually seen—it was “High Crimes” for anyone who cares).  But his approach to the material is flatter than the script itself.  It’s true that sometimes a flat script can be redeemed by energetic direction, but such occasions are rare.  This is not one of those occasions.

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