On the "heroes" and "villains" of a story, and how there are no real heroes or villains in the real world.
You can use those labels, but when people have guns (and knives) pointed and violence erupts, the only thing that matters is death is around the corner (the great equalizer as it always is). Billy Bob Thornton and Carl Franklin don't simply take this group of Killers and cops into gray areas (or really the one cop that matters here, the "Hurricane" Deputy played by Bill Paxton in a brilliantly layered performance, even for him, one of his 2 or 3 towering achievements), they take the ideas of moral ambiguity on one hand to such a sad, bitterly tragic place while on the other present violence as this unstoppable track that leaves chaos in its wake.
One of the things that makes Film Noir and especially Neo Noir so riveting isn't the spectacle of the violence, certainly not as I get older, rather it's presenting these people as they are and we can make up our minds how horrible or good or not so good they are (well... okay, those LA Cops are jerks, let's all agree). It doesn't surprise me that Thornton would later be the first to adapt Cormac McCarthy as a director (albeit not the kind of violent story exactly we know him for, besides the point), and I even get the vibe of the All-Roads-Lead-to-Shit moral decay of Jim Thompson novels. But Franklin as director is the one who keeps the pace both taut in its timing between the Pluto/Malcolm/Fantasia and the Arkansas Cops stories while leaving space for the performances to flesh out those spaces in the script that are practically begging for great actors.
As much as Thornton subsumes himself - as much as he would in Sling Blade or Simplr Plan - into an unrepentant none too bright scumbag and as much as Beach is enthralling as this polar opposite in IQ and temperament (but no less psychotic) Pluto, it's for Paxton and Williams to make this a unique experience in the world of Film Noir (and even morally fucked Westerns) and it's there they create the kinds of characters I want to write about for days. Paxton is so "aw hell yeah, let's get em" in the first half of the story, this seemingly lovable guy who has been a Deputy for six years and never had to use his gun... but around the time he overhears the LA Cops say he's not at all a serious police officer - this after pondering out loud how he'd be in LA also as a cop or just outside an Arkansas small town - his mood changes and doesn't really come back.
And it's amplified once he and Fantasia (spoiler, not her real name, shocking I know) meet again and things come to light. Williams is in her way also playing a certain kind of "Role" with these criminal men (but also in over her head and could she be thrown aside at any time), and by the time she sees Hurricane again, it is... well, you should see the film yourself to find out. But its the kind of dramatic dialog and acting that involves you and breaks your heart because it's about long seated pain and heartbreak on fundamental levels, and it makes one have to rethink what we've seen even in what appear to be morally harrowing stories of the period.
I know that in 1992, Quentin Tarantino became a lightning rod for many reasons in American independent film for how he showed criminals and cops and violence, and while I'll always have a soft spot for the bravura and machismo of a Reservoir Dogs, One False Move has aged better as an uncompromising saga of what violence and pain - and there are many ways to inflict those on others - does to people. And I dont mean to say all this like the suspense and tension is so serious minded it lacks excitement, on the contrary you are gripped in tension as that cop peers into the car at night or Fantasia walks into that bedroom. It's that One False Move takes the after effects more gravely than a (very fun) Tarantino opera.
Matter of fact, it would probably be better on a double bill with Unforgiven than Dogs if you had to pair two from that year. In other words, count this as another one I should have seen ages ago... but then again, it hits hard as I turn 139 years old.
Now on Criterion 4K... and it somehow *still* feels underrated!
