Franklin’s smooth camera movements build unwavering suspense, illuminating the brutal seamlessness of these characters’ actions. In the film’s opening act, Lila’s southern-fried psycho of a boyfriend, Ray (Billy Bob Thornton), and his sadistic spectacled accomplice, Pluto (Michael Beach), murder six Angelinos to get their hands on a large stash of cocaine. It sees violence as the common denominator between blue and red states, a casual fact of life that cannot be stopped no matter your ethnicity or background. Released days after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, One False Move offers a particularly prescient reflection of regional division and segregation still powerfully evident in Donald Trump’s America. Having recently shot a white Texas state trooper in the head at point blank range, the irony of her statement is hard to miss. Lila Walker (Cynda Williams), the mixed-race outlaw trying to avoid capture in order to see her young son again, understands American inequality all too well: “Looking guilty is being guilty, for black people,” she tells her brother. Lawman Dale Dixon (Bill Paxton) naturally utters the n-word while having a peaceful meal with his Los Angeles counterparts, one of whom is black. The racism in Carl Franklin’s One False Move suggests a festering pool of standing water just waiting to be disturbed.
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