Call
it a simple improvisation rather than a simple plan. Nobody thinks too far ahead or particularly
deeply in this criminal morality tale. As a result, there is a mess of trouble for
everyone in David M. Rosenthal’s roughly passable backcountry noir, A Single Shot (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.
John
Moon is an unemployed loser, whose wife Jess has filed for a divorce. Aside from some occasional farm labor temp
jobs, Moon mostly puts food on his table through hunting. While stalking his game one fateful morning, Moon
inadvertently kills a young woman squatting in the woods. Attempting to cover-up the accidental shooting
he discovers a large stash of cash.
Now
Moon has enough money to retain Pitt, the town’s slimiest lawyer, and throw
some look-I’m-not-a-deadbeat-money Jess’s way.
Of course, this is not exactly the best way to maintain a low
profile. Suddenly, he is on Cro-Magnon drug
dealer Waylon’s radar, in a bad way.
Everyone else around him is also acting rather suspiciously, but Moon is
not so quick on the up-take.
Shot has a number of
moody and atmospheric scenes that work quite well, but the tension always dissipates
rather than growing and compounding.
Perhaps the greatest problem is its dubious premise. An experienced hunter would never fire off
the reckless shot that ignites this film.
Someone like Moon, who has been hunting longer than Rosenthal has been
making movies, knows never to pull the trigger unless you are absolutely
certain of what you have in your sites.
Still,
Rockwell is convincingly slow-witted yet simultaneously slow-burningly intense
as Moon. It is largely his work that
will keep viewers invested in Shot,
at least to some extent. William H. Macy
is rather amusing as Pitt, but he might as well be credited as a “special guest
star.” In contrast, the potentially
interesting Jason Isaacs is completely wasted as Waylon, buried under a Wookie’s
worth of greasy locks.
