Deadfall is the
kind of unassuming thriller that’s built entirely out of familiar parts and yet
still manages to make the parts work well together from time to time. It’s a
dark, wintry little movie that starts on the eve of Thanksgiving, with brother
and sister criminals (Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde) counting the money from their
heist while zooming up a snowy, rural Michigan road. Trouble starts when they
hit a deer and flip their car into a ditch, an accident that draws the
attention of a passing state trooper. Covering their tracks, the brother and
sister shoot him dead and split up, running their separate ways through the
forest as a manhunt quickly assembles from the nearby police station.
A sort of rural noir with splashes of local color, this
small, tight movie grabs suspense out of endless white plains and forests of
hunters, cabins, and snowmobiles, as well as the kindness of strangers. Even
though it’s actually Montreal substituting for Michigan, the setting feels
convincing and atypical enough to draw some attention. Now, I’m not saying Deadfall is as good as Fargo, but much like the Coen brothers
did with that film, this crime picture gains some fun and novelty out of
setting traditional crime movie elements against the backdrop of an unexpected
setting. Unlike the Coens, who appear to be constitutionally incapable of
playing anything straight for too long – indeed it’s their verbal and visual
wit that make them near constant delights – this film is dark and relentless.
The plot grows to include a couple of broken families trying
to reconnect over this Thanksgiving weekend. In a big house in the country,
mere miles from the opening accident, there’s a crusty old retired sheriff
(Kris Kristofferson) and his wife (Sissy Spacek) who get a call from their son
(Charlie Hunnam) downstate. He’s just been released from jail and wants to stop
by. We also meet a tenacious young deputy (Kate Mara) who clashes with the
protective, condescending sheriff (Treat Williams), who just happens to be her
father. As these family dramas play out against the backdrop of potential
danger, the film primes some setup for later satisfying, if a touch predictable
and routine, payoff. Especially by the time a snowstorm closes the road and the
prodigal son picks up the hitchhiking fugitive woman who’s desperate for a
place to meet up with her brother and continue their getaway, it’s clear the
shape the story will take. Still, it has some fun getting there.
I certainly don’t mean to oversell this movie. It sags in
the middle, drops a few plot points, and cuts off interesting undercurrents
before they have much time to develop. We never do figure out the exact nature
of the brother and sister’s relationship or receive clarification on various convenient
coincidences here and there. It’s also a little silly at times, like when Bana
gets into a fight with a stereotypical Native American man who gravely informs
his attacker that he was warned about this in a dream, or when two people (I
won’t say who) are meant to be in love after a brief, relatively unconvincing,
period of time. Come to think of it, just about everything involving Bana’s
solo hike to the climax seems awkwardly motivated and weirdly irrelevant to the
big picture.
But, working from a script by Zach Dean, director Stefan
Ruzowitzky, an Oscar-winner for his Holocaust thriller The Counterfeiters, keeps the tension at a nice even keel. Through
unfussy craftsmanship and a trustable, solid cast, he moves things along in a
way not entirely dissimilar to the feeling of compulsively turning the pages of
some just-satisfying-enough airport novel. I wasn’t involved so much as I was curious
to see how the plot would resolve and through what twists the stock characters
would have to live to get to the end. This is a movie that works well on that
level and on that level alone I was satisfied.
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