Take One False Step (1949) review-tripped over its own two feet

When it comes to escapist cinema, crime thrillers and film noir always hit that sweet spot for me.

While sci-fi and fantasy movies are often marketed as the ultimate break from earthly concerns, the settings and characters are sometimes a little too outlandish to be relatable.

Film noir, however, always keeps one foot rooted in the real world by focusing on the kinds of gritty crime stories that have been grabbing news headlines since Prohibition.

But at the same time, these movies also present a heightened reality full of broad archetypes, hard-nosed dialogue, and stylized visuals.

Another recurring trope is the protagonist (whether that be a private eye, journeyman boxer, or everyday schmuck) getting wrapped up in a vast criminal conspiracy beyond their comprehension, which serves as an ideal audience surrogate.

All these elements are at play in Chester Erskine’s Take One False Step (1949), one of three movies bundled into Kino Lorber’s Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema IX collection.

For the first half-hour or so, this project showcases some of the best that the “classic” era of film noir has to offer, with an intriguing mystery and appealing cast that draws you into the story.

Unfortunately, Erskine’s film kind of falls apart after taking a major plot digression in its second act, resulting in an experience that feels like the cinematic equivalent of a giant red herring.

In Take One False Step, William Powell stars as Andrew Gentling, a respected professor who is visiting the State of California to secure funding for a new university.

However, Gentling’s plans get waylaid by the sudden appearance of an old flame (Shelley Winters), who strong arms him into a night of flirtatious drinking before vanishing the following day.

Fearing he could become the prime suspect in this missing persons case, Gentling must scramble to find out what happened to his former lover and dodge a cadre of shady characters in the process.

Despite its title, and a goofy opening montage showcasing a bunch of random people tripping over themselves, Take One False Step actually kicks off on the right foot.

Powell does such a good job at playing the strait-laced academic that his descent into the criminal underworld, where he is forced to constantly lie and break the law to evade police, feels like a big deal.

This tonal shift is hammered home thanks to a nice selection of colourful characters, who give the film’s first act a lot of weight and texture.

Winters’ femme fatale is an obvious example of this, since her glamorous wardrobe and hot-blooded persona serve as the perfect foil for Powell’s dry everyman.

The two also make for an interesting pair considering their contrasting views towards post-WWII America.

While Winters is content with wallowing in the excitement and uncertainty of wartime, Powell remains committed to leaving his military service in the past and build towards a better future (hence the new university).

However, as the story moves forward, Powell is increasingly put in a position where he must abandon these high-minded ideals for his own self-preservation, which adds a nice psychological wrinkle on top of everything.

His descent into moral ambiguity is made even more compelling thanks to some strong supporting players besides Winters.

This includes Marsha Hunt as Winters’ level-headed best friend and James Gleason as the police detective on Powell’s heels, with the latter projecting an unassuming intelligence reminiscent of Peter Falk’s Columbo.

All this is all tied together with some snappy dialogue and slick visuals that one would expect from the genre, combined with an energetic score that helps move the action along at a nice pace.

Unfortunately, all this good set-up is thrown out the window 33 minutes into the movie when Powell gets bitten by a supposedly rabid dog.

Once that happens, the broader mystery regarding Winters’ disappearance is quickly abandoned in favour of this rabies sub plot, where Powell must avoid the authorities while fighting off any emerging symptoms of the disease.

This leads to a handful of scenes where the movie basically stops so that medical professionals can explain what rabies is and how it affects the human body.

It got to the point that I started to wonder if the film’s budget was subsidized by some advocacy group, with its funding being dependent on the script containing some amount of educational content concerning rabies.

This is extra puzzling given the fact that rabies was hardly considered a scourge in North America at that point, with around 40 cases reported each year in the early 1940s and decreasing to a total of 99 for the entire next decade.

While Erskine eventually circles back to the main mystery plot, the film has lost much of its momentum by that point and must settle for a bunch of rushed resolutions.

We don’t even find out about the true nature of the bad guy’s criminal dealings until the last five minutes of the movie, which comes across as a complete afterthought.

This weak revelation is also preceded by one of the stupidest cinematic deaths I’ve seen in a while, which takes place [SPOILERS] when Powell confronts the bad guy in a rail yard.

After a brief tussle with Powell, the villain is spooked by incoming police and quickly finds himself caught between two trains travelling in the opposite direction.

Even though there is clearly enough space and time to avoid these oncoming locomotives, the bad guy stutter-steps like an idiot and gets crushed.

Despite not being shot in a comedic style, I was instantly reminded of the steamroller scene from the first Austin Powers movie, where a henchman’s severe lack of self-preservation is played up for yuks.

The similarly ridiculous death in Take One False Step is extra confusing since the film is sprinkled with humorous moments throughout, which don’t always land or gel with the more serious story beats.

This points to a broader problem with the film, since it lacks a cohesive vision that can marry the good performances and moody visuals with a complimentary script.

As a result, watching Take One False Step is a profoundly frustrating experience, since you can tell its merits are being weighed down by a few head-scratching decisions.

Turning this mystery story into a rabies PSA is obviously the filmmakers’ biggest blunder, and it might be one of the strangest narrative detours I’ve witnessed covering movies for this blog.

Admittedly, it is kind of funny that a film called Take One False Step so noticeably trips over itself in its second half, a fate that might have been willed into existence by running with such an unwieldy title in the first place.

Hopefully the remaining two films in this Kino Lorber collection can provide more of that crime thriller escapism I mentioned earlier, while containing at least 50% less canine fear mongering.

Verdict:

5/10

Corner store companion:

Nature’s Recipe Chewy Bites (because dog owners will pick up a lot of useful information watching this film)

Fun facts:

-Release date: Aug. 14, 1949

-Budget: $855,000

-Kino Lorber’s DVD case for Take One False Step claims that actor Tony Curtis makes an uncredited appearance in the film, with AFI listing his role as “hot rod driver.” However, Curtis is not included amongst other uncredited actors on the movie’s IMDB page and I personally didn’t spot him during my multiple viewings of the film.

-William Powell received three Best Actor Oscar nominations throughout his career for his work in The Thin Man (1934), My Man Godfrey (1936), and Life With Father (1947). Powell retired from acting following his supporting role in the Best Picture-nominated Mister Roberts (1955) due to health issues.

-I might have subconsciously selected Take One False Step (1949) for a screening based on its titular similarity to Carl Franklin’s One False Move (1992), another crime thriller that I covered back in 2018.

-Despite her extensive filmography throughout the 1930s and 40s, Marsha Hunt was largely blacklisted from Hollywood in the 1950s for speaking out against the House Committee on Un-American Activities and being branded as a Communist sympathizer. Hunt was mostly relegated to working on TV throughout this time, although she would return to film in the decades to come and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. She passed away in 2022 at the age of 104.

–Take One False Step can currently be watched in its entirety on YouTube.

Lies and Alibis (2006) review- humble beginnings for Fargo creator

When it comes to the modern slate of TV showrunners, Noah Hawley can always be relied upon to deliver a pleasant surprise.

Not only did he spearhead a cult series based on an obscure X-Men character (Legion), but he also managed to successfully adapt the Coen Brothers’ beloved 1996 crime drama Fargo for the small screen (winning half a dozen Emmys in the process).

But Hawley’s ability to subvert my expectations can be traced back to the very beginning of his screenwriting career when he penned the script for Lies and Alibies, a 2006 crime thriller that was released straight to home video after a limited theatrical run.

Because of its low budget and lack of a wide release, this film has largely been forgotten by vast swaths of the movie-going public, so much so that Mill Creek Entertainment packaged it into their 2014 “Chick Flicks” DVD box set for some reason.

Despite this confusing marketing, I was shocked to discover that Hawley’s writing skills were still sharp in Lies and Alibis, which is particularly impressive given that this is his first produced screenplay.

While elements of this production are a little rough around the edges, it features the same kind of snappy dialogue and quirky criminal archetypes that Hawley would later refine to great success in shows like Fargo.

With that solid script at its core, Lies and Alibis is definitely worth watching for fans of Hawley’s current neo-noir tomfoolery, as long as you can stomach some glaring budgetary restrictions and a couple key casting missteps.

The plot of Lies and Alibis follows smooth-talking entrepreneur Ray (Steve Coogan), who runs a “risk management” firm that helps men and women cheat on their partners without getting caught.

While Ray runs a pretty tight ship, that all gets upended one day when one of his clients accidently kills his mistress in bed.

The resulting cover-up drags Ray into a seedy underworld full of crooks and Mormon gangsters, with the cops also putting him under heavy scrutiny.

To get out of this predicament unscathed, Ray must rely on his wits and a rag-tag group of allies, including his new alluring assistant played by Rebecca Romijn.

Since I’ve already heaped praise on Hawley’s script, let me at least take a moment to balance the cosmic scales of movie criticism by highlighting this film’s worst elements, which are its two leads.

While Coogan has proven himself to be a more than capable actor in the realm of comedy and drama in other projects, he doesn’t do a good job of fusing those two elements here.

Even though this role calls for a kind of fast-talking slickster with a heart of gold (think Bob Odenkirk in the early seasons of Better Call Saul), Coogan can’t quite tap into that energy and just comes off as a little bland.

Romijn suffers a similar fate playing Coogan’s confidant and love interest, which is made even worse by the fact that these two have absolutely zero romantic chemistry together.

If I were to guess the source of this on-screen dysfunction, I would lay it at the feet of directors Kurt Mattila and Matt Checkowski. Lies and Alibis marks their first feature film project after working as visual effects artists, so perhaps guiding principal actors wasn’t their strength at this point.

Thankfully, the rest of the cast is filled with a treasure trove of veteran character actors who have a much better handle on the material.

Sam Elliot makes a big impression as the head of the Mormon mafia, whose leathery drawl and weather-beaten scowl make for an imposing antagonist.

While not as threatening as Elliot, James Brolin and James Marsden also work well as a father-son team of serial philanderers, whose vast wealth is only outweighed by their blatant sleaziness.

And even though certain film noir stock characters are extremely played out by this point, actors like John Leguizamo (the savvy roughneck), Debi Mazar (the hard-nosed detective), and Selma Blair (the femme fatale) are still used to good effect with the little time they have on screen.

Admittedly, it’s a little difficult to keep track of all these characters and their motivations as the plots barrels along, especially when they start turning on each in the third act.

But all this organized chaos is at least held together with some smooth editing, which rapidly flips between several locations without overwhelming the senses.

This level of craftsmanship is on full display during the last 20 minutes, when all the characters converge on one building (a hotel) for the big finale.

Anyone expecting an explosive climax that’s full of gunfire and blood squibs will be sorely disappointed, since it’s obvious that the filmmakers didn’t have enough money for the kind of theatricality that be found in movies like Joe Carnahan’s Smokin’ Aces (2006) or Tony Scott’s True Romance (1993).

However, directors Mattila and Checkowski at least put their past experience as visual effects artists to good use, staging some impressive floor-by-floor transitions that are reminiscent of their work on Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report.

Hawley’s script also shines in this finale, where he manages to take a bunch of tangled plot threads and resolve them all within the space of a couple minutes (without it feeling too contrived).

This marriage of tight editing and smart writing remains Lies and Alibis’ biggest strength, as it provides the same kind of crime thriller catharsis one can find in an Elmore Leonard or Raymond Chandler novel.

Given that Hawley has published a couple thriller novels of his own, I’m sure he was trying to channel some of that same literary style for his feature film debut.

And with a svelte 90-minute runtime, the end product definitely succeeds in replicating the look and tone of those old dime-store detective novels that are light on substance but are never-the-less very entertaining.

Admittedly, the narrow confines of a feature film runtime also present a significant drawback for Hawley, since he isn’t given enough time to adequately flesh out the movie’s worldbuilding beyond the first act.

I could actually see the underlying premise of Lies and Alibis functioning much better as a TV series, where the inner workings of this fictional “cheating” agency are given some room to breathe throughout a 10-to-12-episode season.

Hawley obviously shared similar thoughts about the advantages of this format, which is why so much of his later career is defined by crafting long-form stories on television.

But everyone has to start somewhere and Hawley’s ambitions as a writer are still front and centre in Lies and Alibis, even if this early film project has largely faded into obscurity.

Even so, if Hawley wants to drop some sly references to Ray’s “risk management” firm in the next season of Fargo, he would at least turn me into that meme of Leo DiCaprio pointing at his TV screen.

Verdict:

7/10

Corner store companion:

Maynards Swedish Berries and Creme (because it’s well-constructed and a lot of fun to consume, even though it largely amounts to a short sugar rush)

Fun facts:

-Release date: Lies and Alibis was screened in various countries throughout 2006, including the CineVegas film festival on June 17. The film later premiered on DVD during the fall and winter that same year.

-This film was also released under the alternate title “The Alibi” and is referred to as such on both Wikipedia and IMDB.

-Noah Hawley is currently developing a new series for FX that’s set within Ridley Scott’s Alien universe. In a recent interview with Esquire, Hawley revealed that this series takes place on earth and will examine the corporate greed that fuels companies like the fictional Weyland-Yutani Corporation. This marks Hawley’s latest attempt to break into a well-established sci-fi franchise after his involvement in a new Star Trek film fizzled out.