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Review: "First Snow" |
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Written by Steve Warren
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Friday, 06 April 2007 |
Not Memento but Worth Remembering
Guy Pearce is living with the Memento curse. Most actors think they'd be happy to get one role that good in their careers...until they get one and have to follow it up.
 Get a haircut, hippy!
First Snow finds Pearce in an existential crisis, but the actor makes his character, Jimmy Starks, a bit too likable. The more we become involved in his life and concerned about what will happen to him, the more we learn about his past and what a shit he really is.
Jimmy sells flooring but is working on a deal to acquire a lot of vintage jukeboxes he can peddle to bars. He lives with Deirdre (Piper Perabo), a realtor who'd rather buy a house for two than sell one; but Jimmy doesn't offer much encouragement.
One day, stranded in the New Mexico desert while his car's being repaired, Jimmy patronizes one of the few businesses around, a fortune teller (J.K. Simmons). Putting up with Jimmy's skeptical, smart-ass attitude - he's there to be entertained, not enlightened - the man offers a few casual observations, then suffers a kind of seizure as though he's just been handed a bulletin...by God.
He won't divulge any more, even returns Jimmy's money, but a seed has been planted. When a couple of his minor predictions come true Jimmy returns with a gun to find out what the man knows about his future. It turns out he doesn't have much of a future, but "You're safe until the first snow."
Cue the paranoia as everyday occurrences become strangely ominous. Ed (William Fichtner), a co-worker with whom Jimmy's as "close as two adult males probably ought to get," reminds him of the highway game of spotting red Volkswagens: "You don't realize how many there are until you start looking for them." Hang-up calls and a possibly threatening piece of mail can no longer be shrugged off. In a telling montage Jimmy becomes aware of how many ways there are to die.
He doesn't have far to look for people who might have it in for him, as his past becomes more significant to him than his future. There's Andy (Rick Gonzalez), the young salesman Jimmy had to fire for skimming money the way Jimmy taught him to; and Vincent (Shea Whigham), the childhood friend who just got out of prison after taking the fall for a money laundering scheme they were in together.
Increasingly neglectful of his work and his woman, Jimmy becomes obsessed with pre-empting whatever's getting ready to happen to him. We're told at the outset, "A man makes his own destiny, right? Nothing makes the gods laugh harder."
So from the gods' point of view First Snow is a comedy. For us mortals it's a thriller based more in character than incident.
First-time director Mark Fergus wrote the screenplay with Hawk Ostby (they both worked on Children of Men). First Snow could have benefited from a little tightening - say, five or ten minutes - but it's better than most of the movies you're more likely to see this weekend.
Steve Warren is a local actor and film reviewer. His reviews can also be seen weekly in the Sunday Paper.
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(c) 2005-2007 CinemATL, LLC. |
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First Snow
Rating:  (3 out of 4)
Directed by: Mark Fergus
Written by: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby
Starring: Guy Pearce, Piper Perabo, William Fichtner, J.K. Simmons, Shea Whigham, Rick Gonzalez
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