Saved from the ignominy of a straight-to-DVD fate thanks to strong advance word-of-mouth, Carl Franklin's One False Move is a dark, tightly wound thriller which, in its expert fusion of modernist cool and classic film noir, deftly tips its hat to the James Ellroy/JimThompson oeuvre. Written by Billy Bob Thornton (who also essays one of the key roles) and Tom Epperson, the film plots the wayward misfortunes of three police officers - one of them a country bumpkin sheriff - and three cold-blooded killers whose paths inexorably interesect in a violent showdown one dark night in a lonely Arkansas backwater. Boasting a uniformly excellent cast which, apart from Thorton, includes Bill Paxton, Cynda Williams, Michael Beach and Jim Metzler, Franklin's adroitly assembled B picture leitmotifs - shadowy nightscapes, existential villians, duplicitous dames, portent Freudian conceits - stylistically inform an efficacious crime opus that scene for scene doesn't strike one bad note or make one false move.
