31 years after its initial theatrical release, Carl Franklin still can't believe "One False Move" happened.
The actor-turned-director took a crackerjack screenplay by a pair of struggling writers named Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson, and turned what was supposed to be a direct-to-video thriller featuring a couple of familiar faces (Bill Paxton and Cynda Williams) into a buzzy critical darling. After a brief theatrical run, the film earned five Independent Spirit Award nominations, with Franklin taking home the trophy for Best Director.
Despite this acclaim, "One False Move" has remained an under-the-radar cult favorite amongst neo-noir fans, perhaps because it lacks the Coen Brothers' archness or the overripe sensuality of Lawrence Kasdan's "Body Heat." It's a quietly surprising, yet plenty violent thriller about a trio of criminals who, after committing a string of vicious murders, flee Los Angeles for a backwater Arkansas town run by police chief Dale "Hurricane...
The actor-turned-director took a crackerjack screenplay by a pair of struggling writers named Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson, and turned what was supposed to be a direct-to-video thriller featuring a couple of familiar faces (Bill Paxton and Cynda Williams) into a buzzy critical darling. After a brief theatrical run, the film earned five Independent Spirit Award nominations, with Franklin taking home the trophy for Best Director.
Despite this acclaim, "One False Move" has remained an under-the-radar cult favorite amongst neo-noir fans, perhaps because it lacks the Coen Brothers' archness or the overripe sensuality of Lawrence Kasdan's "Body Heat." It's a quietly surprising, yet plenty violent thriller about a trio of criminals who, after committing a string of vicious murders, flee Los Angeles for a backwater Arkansas town run by police chief Dale "Hurricane...
- 7/31/2023
- by Jeremy Smith
- Slash Film
The racism in Carl Franklin’s One False Move suggests a festering pool of standing water just waiting to be disturbed. Dale Dixon (Bill Paxton), the police chief of Star City, Arkansas, casually utters the n-word while having a peaceful meal with his colleagues, one of whom is Black. Lila Walker (Cynda Williams), the mixed-race outlaw trying to avoid capture in order to see her son again, understands American inequality all too well: “Looking guilty is being guilty, for Black people,” she tells her brother. Having recently shot a white Texas state trooper in the head at point blank range, the irony of her statement is hard to miss. But that doesn’t mean she’s wrong.
Released days after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, One False Move offers a particularly prescient reflection of regional division and segregation. It sees violence as the common denominator between blue and red states, a...
Released days after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, One False Move offers a particularly prescient reflection of regional division and segregation. It sees violence as the common denominator between blue and red states, a...
- 7/18/2023
- by Glenn Heath Jr.
- Slant Magazine
Before A Simple Plan, there was One False Move – a neo noir that was underrated from its very inception. Relegated to the direct-to-video market, it secured a theatrical run through glowing word of mouth, especially that of Gene Siskel, who named it his best film of 1992. A city-by-city release followed, earning Carl Franklin’s film a modest box office of $1.5 million. But like most entries in my retrospective series, One False Move was to be a footnote, neglected and forgotten, with a meagre 9806 votes on IMDb as testament. Happily, this unsung status causes One False Move to be a most satisfying discovery, for it is a film of vicious force and emotional depth that has no flaw worth mentioning.
It begins in a whirlwind of violence as criminal trio Ray (Billy Bob Thornton), Pluto (Michael Beach) and Fantasia (Cynda Williams) burst into a Los Angeles home, looking for a trove of cash and cocaine.
It begins in a whirlwind of violence as criminal trio Ray (Billy Bob Thornton), Pluto (Michael Beach) and Fantasia (Cynda Williams) burst into a Los Angeles home, looking for a trove of cash and cocaine.
- 1/14/2021
- by Jack Hawkins
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Nick Searcy’s “Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer” doesn’t so much play like a movie as it does an oversized episode of “Law & Order.” The events have been ripped from horrifying headlines. The first half is all about catching a killer. The second half is about prosecuting him. And when its done, you can’t help but feel you didn’t get the whole story.
Unlike “Law & Order,” Searcy’s film isn’t just inspired by reality. “Gosnell” tells the story of Kermit Gosnell, a doctor who ran a Pennsylvania abortion clinic which, for many years, operated in unsafe, unclean and unprofessional conditions. His staff was untrained. His methods were monstrous. Gosnell was directly responsible for the death of at least one patient, and gave illegal, late-term “abortions” by killing living infants outside of the womb.
It’s hard to calculate the atrocities Gosnell committed,...
Unlike “Law & Order,” Searcy’s film isn’t just inspired by reality. “Gosnell” tells the story of Kermit Gosnell, a doctor who ran a Pennsylvania abortion clinic which, for many years, operated in unsafe, unclean and unprofessional conditions. His staff was untrained. His methods were monstrous. Gosnell was directly responsible for the death of at least one patient, and gave illegal, late-term “abortions” by killing living infants outside of the womb.
It’s hard to calculate the atrocities Gosnell committed,...
- 10/19/2018
- by William Bibbiani
- The Wrap
When you've got it flaunt it, right? Mwg Entertainment the multi-platform digital studio behind web series My Two Fans and now wedding comedy Road to the Altar, has done an impressive job lining up some household-name sponsors for its projects. Altar is boasting wedding-friendly consumer brands Pier 1, iRobot, Panda Express and Blackberry signed on for the series. The 10-episode series, directed and co-written by Annie Lukowski, stars Jaleel White (Urkel on Family Matters) and Leyna Weber (who also co-wrote) from As the World Turns as a young couple, Simon and Rochelle, pulling together their wedding with a faux-reality TV crew in tow. The couple makes all the expected stops around town to find the perfect vendors for the wedding - florists, valets, wedding dresses, etc. And that's where the veteran TV guest stars come in to shine—Kym Whitley (The Parkers), Rodney Perry (Who’s Got Jokes?), Susan Floyd (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles...
- 6/16/2009
- by Marc Hustvedt
- Tubefilter.com
Madeleine Stowe has been tapped to star opposite Jeff Goldblum on NBC's midseason series Raines. In other casting news, Brooke Burns and Earl Billings have joined Judy Greer in ABC's comedy pilot Miss/Guided. Raines, from NBC Universal TV Studio, centers on Michael Raines (Goldblum), an eccentric, brilliant cop who talks to dead victims who help him solve his crimes. Stowe will play a shrink whom Raines is forced to go see. Their relationship is described as "a battle of wits." This past development season, Stowe starred in Fox's drama pilot Southern Comfort. On the screen, she was most recently seen in the CBS telefilm Saving Milly. Stowe is managed by Brillstein-Grey Entertainment and the Schiff Co.
- 10/12/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Brutally graphic, with an unfliching, hard-consequences finale, "One False Move'' will rivet Jim Thompson fans -- it's in that intense, unsparing tradition -- but its quick-trigger and rub-your-nose-in-it squalor are likely to hold only the most minuscule of movie audiences. Plugged with riveting textures and coarsed with raw contradictions, the film will likely fare well in its special space on the video shelf.
The film opens with a nauseatingly vivid drug murder in Los Angeles -- two dealers, accompanied by a coked-out woman, wipe out an innocent family. They're a scary group, a pathologically violent white-trasher Billy Bob Thornton), a clinically cold, black genius (Michael Beach) and a desperate, whacked-out mulatto with the nom de streets of Fantasia (Cynda Williams).
With a bundle of coke, they blast out of Los Angeles, heading to Houston to unload the stuff, with an eventual destination of Star City, Ark., where Fantasia grew up and, in her rattled drug delirium, yearns to return.
They don't exactly leave the scene of the crime without clues, and it's not long before the LAPD figures out their destination, sending two veteran homicide investigators (Jim Metzler, Earl Billings) on their trail. Up ahead, they've alerted the Star City sheriff, a local-yokel lawman nicknamed Hurricane (Bill Paxton) who's thrilled by the chance to do some big-time stuff.
Cross-cutting between the events of the chase and the dirtwater Arkansas burg where Hurricane is whetting his chops for action, director Carl Franklin has cranked up an unnervingly tight-triggered film. Screenwriters Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson's scenario never relents from the out-of-control nature of the trio's bad acts.
The performances are chock-full with hard mettle. Thorton is rivetingly vile as the explosive dealer, while Beach's portrayal of his methodical accomplice is cunningly powerful. As Fantasia, Williams is the film's most sympathetic character, soundly limning the horrific downspin of an abused woman who keeps coming back for more.
Paxton as the good-ole-boy, backwoods lawman, gets to this grit of his inner fires, revealing the dark flecks in his good-guy/white-hat persona.
The technical credits are tough and crisp. Top marks, especially to Peter Yaycock and Derek Holt's score: a raw swirl of blues and hard roads.
ONE FALSE MOVE
I.R.S. Releasing
A Carl Franklin Film
Producers Jesse Beaton, Ben Myron
Director Carl Franklin
Screenwriters Billy Bob Thornton, Tom Epperson
Executive producers Miles A. Copeland III, Paul Colichman, Harold Welb
Executives in charge of production Toni Phillips, Steven Reich
Director of photography James L. Carter
Production designer Gary T. New
Editor Carole Kravetz
Costume designer Ron Leamon
Music Peter Haycock, Derek Holt
Sound mixer Ken Segal
Color/Stereo
Dale "Hurricane" Dixon Bill Paxton
Fantasia/Lila Cynda Williams
Ray Malcolm Billy Bob Thornton
Pluto Michael Beach
Dud Cole Jim Metzler
McFeely Earl Billings
Running time - 114 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
The film opens with a nauseatingly vivid drug murder in Los Angeles -- two dealers, accompanied by a coked-out woman, wipe out an innocent family. They're a scary group, a pathologically violent white-trasher Billy Bob Thornton), a clinically cold, black genius (Michael Beach) and a desperate, whacked-out mulatto with the nom de streets of Fantasia (Cynda Williams).
With a bundle of coke, they blast out of Los Angeles, heading to Houston to unload the stuff, with an eventual destination of Star City, Ark., where Fantasia grew up and, in her rattled drug delirium, yearns to return.
They don't exactly leave the scene of the crime without clues, and it's not long before the LAPD figures out their destination, sending two veteran homicide investigators (Jim Metzler, Earl Billings) on their trail. Up ahead, they've alerted the Star City sheriff, a local-yokel lawman nicknamed Hurricane (Bill Paxton) who's thrilled by the chance to do some big-time stuff.
Cross-cutting between the events of the chase and the dirtwater Arkansas burg where Hurricane is whetting his chops for action, director Carl Franklin has cranked up an unnervingly tight-triggered film. Screenwriters Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson's scenario never relents from the out-of-control nature of the trio's bad acts.
The performances are chock-full with hard mettle. Thorton is rivetingly vile as the explosive dealer, while Beach's portrayal of his methodical accomplice is cunningly powerful. As Fantasia, Williams is the film's most sympathetic character, soundly limning the horrific downspin of an abused woman who keeps coming back for more.
Paxton as the good-ole-boy, backwoods lawman, gets to this grit of his inner fires, revealing the dark flecks in his good-guy/white-hat persona.
The technical credits are tough and crisp. Top marks, especially to Peter Yaycock and Derek Holt's score: a raw swirl of blues and hard roads.
ONE FALSE MOVE
I.R.S. Releasing
A Carl Franklin Film
Producers Jesse Beaton, Ben Myron
Director Carl Franklin
Screenwriters Billy Bob Thornton, Tom Epperson
Executive producers Miles A. Copeland III, Paul Colichman, Harold Welb
Executives in charge of production Toni Phillips, Steven Reich
Director of photography James L. Carter
Production designer Gary T. New
Editor Carole Kravetz
Costume designer Ron Leamon
Music Peter Haycock, Derek Holt
Sound mixer Ken Segal
Color/Stereo
Dale "Hurricane" Dixon Bill Paxton
Fantasia/Lila Cynda Williams
Ray Malcolm Billy Bob Thornton
Pluto Michael Beach
Dud Cole Jim Metzler
McFeely Earl Billings
Running time - 114 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
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