A Single Shot

I love Sam Rockwell. He picks great projects and this no exception. This is not a fast paced feature but I story I really enjoyed. Maintained a great tension and foreboding throughout which I really enjoy in a film. This is a simple story with some great twists and turns. Starts out slow like a slow burn and then ramps up quickly. This story is believable and has no real holes in it. It's a story you can relate to in that it seems very plausible and believable. You feel the characters fear and tension with the situation he finds himself in. This is a slow paced thriller that is well filmed and the performances are excellent.

At first glance it is easy to think A Single Shot is a pretty enough, moody enough, well acted retread of themes and styles from Shallow Grave, A Simple Plan, No Country For Old Men or Winter's Bone and you'd be forgiven for thinking that because there is some element of truth in it. When it comes to plot and stylistic originality you won't find it here. What you will find is an engaging and expertly, if sometimes a little too authentically, played character study disguised as a generic, backwoods, crime thriller. So, my first piece of advice to you is to throw out the plot. Don't engage, as you normally would, through what the characters are doing but more with who the characters are.

The story, such as it is, focuses around Sam Rockwell's character, John Moon. Estranged from his wife Moira, played by Kelly Reilly (Sherlock Holmes), he lives near to some conservation land, where he routinely goes hunting, despite being caught and charged for doing so on numerous occasions. He's a simple, proud man of few words just trying to put his life back together. While out hunting on this land one morning, trying to catch a deer, he accidentally shoots a woman who, he later finds out, is carrying a ton of cash with her. Despite being definitely distraught at his accidental actions, he knows that to report them would mean jail time. Instead he hides the body, takes the money and is determined to get his life, meaning his wife and child, back. However, the money, of course, is linked to a web of unsavoury characters who, one by one, try and get their hands on it. Tobacco is chewed, lines are mumbled in thick, heavy accented drawls and bodies pile up. Will John Moon come out on top or is his demise inevitable?

The press release describes the film as a tense and atmospheric game of cat and mouse and if that was the honest intention of the film then, I am sorry to say, it fails. It's too slow moving, too drenched in melancholy strings and blue, grey, damp photography. The characters aren't menacing or threatening enough and, more often than not, the tension is lost as you are straining to understand what the hell is going on as some terrific actors grumble, twitch and spit through thick beards and thicker accents. I like to believe, though, that the film is more than that. More than a generic cat and mouse thriller about a bag of money and some grubby but pleasingly quirky hillbillies. It might just be his acting and his endless watchability, but I think the film is most successful as an in-depth and tragic character study of Sam Rockwell's John Moon. Studying and delving in to, as it does, ideas of lost opportunity, loss of love, pride coming before a fall, having the strength to survive, betrayal, fear, not being able to see the wood for the trees (which is indicated in several nice visual clues) and making your bed and damn well having to lie in it. On this level the film succeeds handsomely and Rockwell, also serving as producer on the film, gives a, at first, gruff and almost monosyllabic and unsympathetic performance that grows, over the running time, into a tragic, sometimes heart wrenchingly unlucky and down trodden character that you root for to, some how, find a way out of his predicament, even though your brain can't find one and you probably know that an easy resolution will not be forthcoming. He has surrounded himself well with the cream of character actors, the sort of 2nd tier players who are a sheer delight to just recline and watch act.

William H Macy, sporting an outrageously bad toupee, a suspect moustache, a sports jacket worthy of a scuzzy car salesman from the 50s and affecting a handicap in the form of a damaged arm and limp, gives a performance that dances neatly along the line of parody and awards worthy that he, and his peers, have so perfected in their work with the Coens. He is weasley, sinister, pathetic, dangerous, unnerving and humorous all rolled into one and the film could've used a lot more of him.

The film also features great but, sadly, tiny performances from Ted Levine, Jason Isaacs and Melissa Leo who, I doubt, get much more screen time, combined, than you'd be easily able to count on two hands. The only other stand out actor worth a mention being, the always worth the price of admission, Jeffrey Wright. His performance, as a wild, reckless, drunkard friend of John Moon is fantastic and combines almost every tick, twitch and technique an actor can deploy to best portray an alcoholic red neck. The only downside to this is, as the film enters its third act, Wright shows up to deliver some important plot information but it gets buried under piles of grime, dribble, tobacco, alcoholic slurring, an indecipherable accent and a crap flecked thicket of facial hair. As superb and as delightful as the mud smeared technique is, it's this scene that almost derails the film, that is if you are still trying to figure out what is going on but, I've already told you, the plot is not important.

Much like the plot, though, the downfall in the direction is that the film feels all too familiar. From the colour palette to the score (which features the, too often used, discordant pizzicato strings) nothing here feels different from something you've seen a hundred times before and while the techniques on display are exemplary, the lack of anything new can make parts of the, already slow, film drag.

That being said it does feel authentic and atmospheric. The set dressing, the costumes, the ___location and the lighting also do their part to help you feel the cold, the damp, the dirt and the drink.

Many reviewers are complaining about this movie being "slow" because of the plot. What makes this movie slow is the pacing and uneven structure. The plot itself fine and actually pretty interesting - a hunter accidentally kills someone in the woods and decides not to tell anyone about it. He finds a stash of money with the body and uses it to better his Son. That's a good story. Unfortunately, it's the poor direction, editing and writing of this movie that really destroy what is a pretty good premise.

Honestly (the more I think about it), with the exception of an interesting story (at least at the beginning) and a great performance by Rockwell, this film is a complete mess. There are numerous scenes that don't fit or just don't make sense. Though Rockwell is fantastic, many of his character's actions are completely idiotic. I blame a poor script filled with convenient characters that serve as nothing more than stereotypical plot devises. Neo-noir films can break rules and be implausible, but that's because they usually have a pacing that builds to a great climax, making you forgot about all the plot holes and illogical characters.

Rockwell's character is the only person in the movie with any depth. Which is a testament to Rockwell, because the writer does not do anything to help us relate to this guy. I guess, to a degree, that might be the point - this unlucky chap could be any of us. But at a certain point I wanted more focus on the psychological weight of his murder, a Tell Tale Heart kind of thing, and less No Country For Old Men 2.

I didn't hate this movie. It does create a nice atmosphere, but there's too much wrong with it to really enjoy it for more than 10 minutes at a time at any point. Thank goodness for Rockwell, or it would have been completely unwatchable.

Check out Cold In July or Blue Ruin - those films show you how to do neo-noir thrillers right.

Went into this movie expecting some sort of cat and mouse game or a "Vacancy" like thriller about persons being taken down one after another, but as pleasantly surprised to find its neither, Instead its feels like an backwoods thriller evoking a particular emotional or aesthetic quality through a combination of acting, visuals and realism shots . It feels as if one is there to experience the story as it happened to u personally of someone who had committed a crime covered it up and the mental trauma of going through blackmail only to realise that those around u cant be trusted. i would have to agree for most part i was engrossed guessing about whats happening on screen for most of the time. Of course there is ample drama revolving around relationships and characters caught up in their own world. pretty much half the show revolves around this and the main central character keeping his cool around a sticky situation he is caught up in

An atmospheric thriller that grips you in parts from the opening scene together with the bleak finale

The result will please some, others not, keeping their reservations about the movie . Tells a strange story of mystery and horror, which plays-mostly-in the majestic surroundings of a rural countryside during a dark winter or near spring season . Most of the film has dark or muted color tones of the backwoods and rural landscape

With some good visuals aesthetics and successful direction of actors, the movie creates from a tense opening of a woman being killed and into thriller that evolves into a mostly psychological movie. A movie mystery where the silences, inactivity of most part of the show and the images reflect the intuitions, intentions and sensations of persons through scenes depicting from a troubled guilty character huddled in the corner of the house's lone bathroom , the sole light of a single lamp or inviting illumination from the winter sun through the tree tops tells a story to the viewer

The film also seems to accurately depict what happens in mostly backwoods or rural countryside town where a few shady characters co exist with normal everyday people. Most of the movie revolves around this premise and examining the morality of both sets of characters

The show starts off a bleak and sorrowful scene t though halfway it seems to lose track to a family drama and a witch hunt only to regain back at the final minutes

Overall worth a watch, one of the movies u would like to see on a week off day or vacation.

This is an exquisitely dark, rural, all-American series noir. Plot line and moral being: a good man goes bad, because that's the way things can be, the way things are. Nature -- human or otherwise, isn't kind. Mistakes happen. And you often pay for them in the wilderness of this world we live in alone and altogether. Chance has its way of crushing you, burying you alive. Watch out. Plus, aside from a potent story line, the acting is downright first rate. Not a single one of the actors are off key. I don't know who did the casting for "A Single Shot", but they deserve an award for it. Also exquisite in this film is the ending -- one of the most original examples of "open ended" I've ever seen in a film. You've got to be in a dark, worried mood to like this film; its darkness is relentless. "A Single Shot" is not for everyone; in no way is it "G" or "GP". But for thoughtful adults it is very well worth the watching.