One of the blackest, nastiest neo-noirs of the 1990s, Carl Franklin’s One False Move gets its release with Criterion today. It’s a long way from the films humble beginnings, where it was initially intended to go direct to video, until word of mouth (from Roger Ebert among others) secured it a theatrical release.

Written by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson, there is an economy to the dialogue and plot that stands out from the increased preference in the 90s for ironic detachment and pop-culture dialogue. Unlike other crime films that immediately preceded the films of Quentin Tarantino, this one hasn’t aged badly at all. It still feels contemporary, perhaps because of the universal themes that permeate the film – ideas of the suburban vs the small town, and conflicts related to class and race that are unfortunately just as relevant today.

Ray (Billy Bob Thornton with an unfortunate ponytail) is not a very nice man. His accomplice, Pluto (Michael Beach) is even worse. They use Ray’s girlfriend Fantasia (Cynda Wilson) to gain entry to a party where they steal the drugs and money, leaving eight bodies in their wake. They aren’t psychopaths, but their casual callousness is disturbing in a way that modern villains with their cartoonish villainy can never be. Thornton and Beach play radically different villains – Ray is always moving, shouting, a volatile loose cannon who is sure to get them all killed at some point. Pluto is a coiled spring, an impassive, cold-blooded killer who in Franklin’s words, moves “like a cat.”

Similar to Blood Simple and Red Rock West in it’s depiction of ruthlessness in the south, the actual plot is more similar to Fargo in the way the well-meaning sheriff takes on an evil that he just can’t comprehend. There are whole narrative beats that also bear more than a passing resemblance to the Coens’ film, from the volatile dynamic of the villains, to the small-town sheriff being underestimated by all who meet him. There is even a fateful encounter with a highway patrolman, that mirrors a similar scene in Fargo. Franklin would follow this up with the excellent Devil In A Blue Dress. But while that film is steeped in the mythos of classic film noir, One False Move is a much nastier affair. There’s a dreadful inevitability to the way the film unfolds, culminating in a climax that is both shocking and abrupt.

Bill Paxton gives what might be his finest performance as Dale “Hurricane” Dixon, the cocksure small town sheriff pulled in to assist the city suited detectives in their hunt for the fugitives. His eagerness to please makes him an endlessly endearing hero. He manages the difficult task of embodying all the cliches of the southern sheriff character, while remaining a fully dimensional character, with his own darker side. The scene where he hears the detectives belittling his country bumpkin demeanour is so perfectly performed by Paxton. He obviously gets the broader strokes of the character just right as you would expect from his larger-than-life performances in Aliens (“Game over man! Game over!”) and Near Dark, but he utterly nails the subtlety of moments like these. His expression barely changes yet you can see just how completely crestfallen he is by this brutal assessment.

Cynda Williams is an actress I wasn’t familiar with, but she is great as Fantasia, convincingly innocent while also calculating and untrustworthy. It’s clear that she knows she is in over her head with Ray and Pluto, but needs to play at their game to extricate herself. In her scene with Paxton towards the end it’s very possible that she did just want her lighter from her bag, but the presence of the pistol makes us doubt her just as much as Dale.

Unlike Spike Lee or Bill Duke, who put race issues front and centre in their films, Franklin doesn’t explicitly make films about race. Instead he uses race to provide context for his characters and their motivations. On the surface Fantasia’s ethnicity might seem unimportant, but it proves essential in informing her character, her attitude to Dale and his animosity towards her. There is a definite racially charged tension to their scenes together, and Dale doesn’t emerge as particularly heroic.

Dale is clearly shown to be racist (albeit in a way that’s more thoughtless than callous) and it creates an interesting dichotomy. Obviously we are rooting for him in the scenes with the dismissive city detectives (Earl Billings and Jim Metzler) where his racist slip is played more for laughs that anything else, and he is clearly the underdog. But in his scenes with Fantasia it’s a lot more ambiguous just whose side we should be on. There’s an undeniable tension underscoring their scenes, made explicit when she says “You figured since I look kinda white you can f*** me. And because I was kinda black, you think you can dump me.” Franklin never shies away from the uglier side of his characters, even the heroes, and once said of his film:

“It’s about atonement, about reaping what you sow, about somehow reckoning with your own fate. It’s about how in the harvest of our success is usually the seed of our destruction.”

Yet of the main characters, the only one who you feel really atones by the end of the film is Dale, in a touching final coda.

A wonderfully gritty slice of noir, One False Move is lean, uncompromising and palpably nasty without being gratuitous. From the chilling murders of the opening scene to the climactic shootout, it commands your attention for every minute of its runtime. One of my favourite first watches of the year.

Special Features

Compared to some of the more packed recent releases from Criterion, this is a little underwhelming, with only one new extra, an admittedly interesting and fun conversation between Franklin and Thornton about the making of the film. The rest of the special features are comprised of pre-existing material, including a commentary from Franklin, a trailer and an essay by author William Boyle.

One False Move is out now released by the Criterion collection. Order here: https://amzn/B0BS46D7MB