Los Angeles. Criminals Ray, Pluto and Lila "Fantasia" enter a house and kill the people inside to steal their money and cocaine, and then flee. A neighbor recognizes Ray's car. The police discover a tape from the house where someone says they are heading for Star City, Arkansas, so detectives McFeely and Cole are sent there to team up with local sheriff Dale Dixon to arrest them when they show up. Along their drive, a police officer randomly stops them at a road, so Ray, Pluto and Lila shoot him. In Houston, Texas, Ray and Pluto want to sell the drugs, but when the dealers want to give them only a small financial compensation, they shoot them. Lila arrives at Star City, where she meets up with Dixon, with whom she had an affair and secretly had a son, Byron, who lives with her brother Ronnie. When Pluto and Ray arrive at the house, Dixon ambushes them, but in the shootout, they are all killed, with only Dixon left wounded on the ground.
"One False Move" retroactively achieved a re-newed interest when film critic Gene Siskel named it as his no. 1 favorite film of the year. However, in reality, the movie is still two notches below this overhyped statement: it is a fluent, astringent and multi-layered crime film, yet it is at times sloppily written and "rough" in its structure. For instance, the murders in the opening sequence are chaotic, banal and disjointed, never really ringing authentic. The criminals Ray, Pluto and Lila enter a house and randomly tie up the inhabitants, kick them, slap them, Ray even pours some inflamable liquid over the hair of a woman and threatens to put it on fire using a lighter, asking for where some Marco lives, but since the viewers are not given any context, this whole sequence just feels "off", like random violence without any sense or purpose. Two people were dancing and a third one was filming them with a camera, which even catches the conversation where Lila says she is heading for Star City, yet, remarkably, later Pluto is seen watching the tape, but just leaves it in the house when he leaves, allowing for the police to obtain it and have a clue where they are going. Wouldn't it have made much more sense for Pluto to destroy the tape and any possible evidence from the scene of the crime? It just feels illogical.
"One False Move" is very slow in its set-up, and it doesn't really ignite all until some 43 minutes into the film, when there is a great sequence where Ray and Lila are at a store in Texas and spot a cop shopping there, so they try to discreetly buy and leave as fast as possible. However, the cop follows them and pulls them over, just to check out their suspicious behavior, allowing for a suspensful and electrifying showdown which ignites the film. For some reason, the film tries to portray Star City sheriff Dixon (Bill Paxton) as some sort of misunderstood hillbilly with a good heart, but he doesn't come across as such: for instance, Dixon arrives at a house where an angry husband thrusts an axe at the door of his house, having a feud with his wife inside, and even resists Dixon who tries to restrain him, pushing him backwards and breaking the window. Instead of arresting him on the spot, Dixon talks to the husband, tells him to make up with his wife, and then gives him the axe back (!), turns around (!), and considers the situation solved, which feels so wrong it's painful to watch. The character of criminal Pluto hinted at a much more complex character than we got: he wears glasses and is clearly much more intelligent and articulate at talking than Ray, played brilliantly by Michael Beach, but there is no character growth, no change, no insights or lessons, and he just ends like any brute criminal would in the finale, which is a letdown. There are some fresh camera angles towards the end (the frog perspectives of a man playing a harmonica or Ray driving the car), and a plot twist involving the secret relationship between two people, yet the dialogue is rather standard, and the ending a typical bloody shootout cliche, leaving a good film that could have been much better.
Grade:++
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