Critics reviews

I have seen some festival reviews that call the ending "abrupt." Can I just say, it is the conclusion par excellence, an ambiguous but suggestive topper to all that has preceded it. It is literally "heavenly," just the right counterpoint to the slimy people and sets we have encountered for an hour and a half.

Two Step is the rare thriller that resounds with an authentic ring of chaos. Director Alex R. Johnson mixes two different unofficial genres: the eccentric redneck character study, in the vein of a Billy Bob Thornton film, with a post-noir bloodbath that self-consciously recalls Blood Simple, only with an even larger dollop of the startling cruelty that one encounters in Jim Thompson's writing. Johnson plays with these moods so ruthlessly that viewers are never allowed to get their bearings.

Nifty Texas noir Two Step gets us acclimated to its community of fully realized and differentiated characters before letting blood flow or bullets fly—which is another way of saying that writer/director Alex R. Johnson dares honor the bygone art of cinematic storytelling. It's a film in which costs—human, financial, moral—are always fully counted and felt.

It's a thriller of sorts, shot through with plenty of noir tropes, tension and foreboding. But it's the characters who put the step into Two Step... As for Johnson, I can't help but suspect that he and some future long-form television series are going to be a really nice fit. And that's meant as a compliment.