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Simply Perfect

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Dear Billy Bob Thorton, how are things? How's Bad Santa 2 going? Its sad Terry Zwigoff is not a part of the project. I'm a big fan of yours.I watched One False Move. It is so overrated. I know you wrote it.It was a pretty brave film. You wrote a film with a lot of inter-racial relationships. Some of it was really interesting. I don't think I understood all of it, I am not an American.The film was pretty dull despite the premise with so many interesting relationships. It felt like you were reigning yourself in a little bit.Anyway, Cynda Williams was awesome. She is such a great femme fatale.But I don't really understand the structure of this film. Why did you write it this way? You should have taken a leaf out of some of the thrillers from the 50s and the 60s. The film was also quite long.I liked the whole vibe of this film - the small town and the ridiculous red neck sheriff.Some people on the board seem to love this film.I do not.Best Regards, Pimpin.(5.5/10)

Some films just slip, for whatever reason, below the radar. We get any amount of top-budget, CGI-heavy dreck which go on to catch the headline - albeit for a week or two - but other films, such as One False Move, which proudly stands head and shoulders over its rivals is barely noticed.The story is simple and effectively told. There are no false histrionics, there is no grandstanding, the violence and horrific murders are not celebrated in that god-awful balletic way favoured by Tarantino and his ilk, and the whole thing is presented to the viewer on the assumption that the viewer has a brain.Yet despite its undoubted quality One False Move slips past and is 'just another film'. It's strength is that it is character-driven and people talk and behave like real people. It manages to convey the complexity of people: one of a trio who ripped off a drug dealer and six people are horrifically killed in the whole episode spares a young lad and saves him from certain death at the hands of her more sadistic accomplices, then goes on to kill a state trooper in cold blood.A small-town sheriff who yearns for greater things is mortified when he overhears the two big-shot cops from LA laughing at him behind his back. It spurs him on to try to be a hero and apprehend two of the gang all on his own. He does so, but at the cost of three lives and gets badly injured himself. All in all he might have got the men, but it is all just a bloody mess. The performances are all good ones, and the direction, camera-work and editing all add the sense of dread and help heighten the tension.The director is Carl Franklin who made another great but overlooked film in Devil In A Blue Dress. If you are able to catch this - though I don't know how because it doesn't seem to be shown on TV - do so. You won't regret spending time on what is something of a gem.

Violent opening scene. Criminals on the run while a few cops go to a town where the criminals might end up, too. In that town the cops meet with a cop who might not be so right for the job, or is he? It turns out he has a history with one of the criminals and (more) drama ensues when that (female) criminal returns to the town in question and the other two criminals follow later. In the end violence explodes again, immediately followed by a sentimental bit.'One false move' is quite the unusual film (playing with a lot crime thriller drama conventions) that uses (strong) violence only a few times, but mostly builds on drama and characters. Maybe some things are far fetched (the girlfriend of the sheriff turning out to be the one he got pregnant years ago) and some things are not all too credible (would the brilliant knife-specialist really not aim to kill straight away - and go for the throat - when attacking the sheriff?), but these may be coincidences and odd choices that people in real life make sometimes, too. The only part that I didn't particularly like was the overly sentimental very end (when the boy gets left alone in the cop car and wanders over to the dying sheriff).But there is some fine acting, it has an atmospheric soundtrack and it was more than adequately filmed. A small 8 out of 10. P.s. There's a thread here about the meaning of the title. Besides to the obvious nature of the situations at hand, it also applies to the 'false move' that the sheriff made in the past with the black girl, whom he loved but then discarded - all too easily, as his past comes back to haunt him.

A sweetly innocuous small town gets a visit from some big time hoods and local sheriff Bill Paxton wants in on the bust, much to the annoyance of the two L.A. cops trailing them. But soon there is much more going on than a crime story. The sheriff's ex is traveling with the goons and her personal history with the sheriff then serves to fog up an otherwise straightforward pursuit. Motives and loyalties are questioned, temptations arise and personal drama takes the foreground. This second act shift from crime story to relationship drama is what gives the movie its power and makes it memorable and unusual. Too often, crime thrillers have tacked on romantic subplots that just clutter things up, but here the relationship and its fall-out are inextricable from the plot and are in fact pushing it ahead. The proceedings feel authentic and the drama has power rooted in that emotional authenticity. Cynda Williams is particularly good as the ex; she doesn't just appear in the movie, she haunts it. Her strong presence and her emotional history with the sheriff pervade and color everything that comes after her first appearance and she becomes the key figure and the great enigma at the center of the drama. I liked the dusty-but-harmless look of the small Arkansas town, and the way everybody in it manages to convey normalcy without being dull. This shows good writing and quality work on the part of the minor players. The whole movie is a testament to putting quality in the details. There are few false notes struck here, a rare thing for a low budget crime drama.