BUY TICKETS HERE
Join us at 1 p.m. Sunday, September 22 for a screening of “One False Move” (1991), the suspenseful thriller about the collision course between a small-town sheriff and a group of dangerous killers.
ONE FALSE MOVIE | 1991 | DIRECTOR: Carl Franklin | WITH: Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Cynda Williams, Michael Beach | RUNNING TIME: 1H 45M | RATED R for strong violence, language and drug content | 4K DIGITAL PROJECTION
A small-town police chief (Bill Paxton) concealing an explosive secret. A pair of ruthless drug dealers (cowriter Billy Bob Thornton and Michael Beach) who leave a bloody trail in their wake as they make their way from Los Angeles to Arkansas. And an enigmatic woman (Cynda Williams) caught in the middle.
The way these desperate lives converge becomes a masterclass in slow-burn tension thanks to the nuanced direction of Carl Franklin, whose haunting film travels a crooked road across America’s most fraught divisions—urban and rural, Black and white—while imbuing noir conventions with a wrenching emotional depth.
“One False Move is many things. A stunning nineties neonoir. A tragedy. A movie that says more about race and class without being didactic than many others that try hard to say something. A road picture. A lovers-on-the-run tale. A flawless encapsulation of the desperate energy and desperate deeds that fuel real crime. It feels timeless. It’s a structural marvel. A study in tension and pacing.
“Having moved from Brooklyn to Mississippi over a decade ago, I feel like I understand the film in ways now that I couldn’t have previously. It’s a complex portrait of the South. The awful weight of history and tradition. Kindness often masking complicity. Buried secrets. The atmosphere misted over with sins of the past. Attempts to smile through pain and yearning. Cycles of poverty and grief and near escape. Dark humor.
“More than thirty years later, watching One False Move brings me back to being the kid I was when I first saw it: trying to understand the world, seeking art that tells the truth, and finding something this urgent and poetic and haunting.” — William Boyle
Tickets are $5 and available at link above. Students use code UMSTUDENT at checkout for free admission (Cane card will be checked at the door).
