Avis des critiques

One False Move was always a bad movie, and I still remember those disconcerting slaughter scenes, but I also remember its press screening where pundits from the New Yorker and New York magazine turned to one another and nodded approval. It all fits too comfortably into today’s racial exploitation and political degeneracy.

One False Move is an interrogation of shame and race, whilst also functioning as an exorcism of a century of violent cinema. As a result, it feels like the last movie on earth, the end of a cinematic era.

The brilliant, punishing script by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson is uncompromising in its humanization of evil people and its complication of those who believe themselves to be good. . . . The film, though, is owned by Bill Paxton, delivering a career-best performance as a small-town policeman utterly unprepared for the monstrousness threatening his way of life.

One False Move charts all the warning signs and consequences that come with proliferating such ignorance and fear, most notably through segregation. More than 30 years after its release, it remains a film of great social relevance and frightening urgency.

A superb modern thriller in the ultra-hardboiled Jim Thompson mould... The asides on racial and sexual inequality are made subtly and succinctly; the performances and pacing are nigh perfect; the violence is explicit, disturbing but never gratuitous; and Franklin - a black actor whose directing debut this is - achieves a consistency of mood that other far more experienced film-makers would give their right arms for.

Emotionally complex thriller with riveting performances.

[I]t's fair to say that the directing is rather less sure-footed than the script. Franklin has a considerable career behind him as an actor, and gets fine performances from his cast, but he rather overdoes the film noir props towards the end.

Thematically, the movie doesn't make a strong statement, but it is strikingly expressive in its details. The film is Franklin's first, but already he's developed a strong... language... [and] aesthetic personality.

Director Franklin and writers Thornton and Tom Epperson imbue the movie with a flat, chilly atmosphere. Straightforward, non-gymnastic camerawork heightens the sense of realism; it makes the grisly more commonplace, hence more alarming.

Mr. Franklin's measured pacing and James L. Carter's meticulous cinematography give "One False Move" a clear, bold, angular look reminiscent of many other nouveau noir films, especially "Blood Simple," the one that put the Coen brothers on the map. But the acting style here is warmer and less self-conscious than that implies.

There are a few too many cornball motifs, like the ominous whippoorwill that presages a character’s death near the end, but for the most part the action is effective and no-nonsense.

Here is a crime movie that lifts you up and carries you along in an ominously rising tide of tension, building to an emotional payoff of amazing power. On the very short list of great movies about violent criminals, “One False Move” deserves a place of honor... It is a great film - one of the best of the year - and announces the arrival of a gifted director, Carl Franklin.