One False Move.

AMERICAN movies today are aimed at three kinds of audiences: kids, cokeheads, and those seeking any kind of loud and vulgar stimulation with which to fill up a gaping inner emptiness for a couple of hours. Under those circumstances, story is the first thing that goes out the window. Cheap laughs, cheap thrills, bloated production values will do quite nicely.

One False Move is a modest B picture, but, wonder of wonders, it tells a real story. A trio of drug addicts cum criminals--the black sociopath, Pluto, the psychopathic redneck, Ray, and his mulatto girlfriend, Fantasia-- "cold-bloodedly rip off a large stash of cocaine and cash from two families, killing six people."I take David Denby's word for it because the film begins so confusingly that it is hard to tell how many houses, families, victims are involved. But if Carl Franklin, the black actor turned director, and his white screenwriters (Billy Bob Thornton, who plays Ray, and Tom Epperson) are not good at that kind of clarity, they are adept at creating suspense and at conveying brutality and horror in a way that reaches the precise last limit of the bearable.

The police in Los Angeles, where the murders took place, figure out that the trio is headed for tiny Star City, Arkansas, where both Ray and Fantasia (whose real name is Lila) have family; Pluto is from Chicago, and met Ray in San Quentin. Star City is a good place to hide out. First, however, the trio, unbeknown to the police, heads for Houston, to sell the dope to a dealer there, but things go bloodily wrong. As they also do elsewhere along the highway, where a state trooper grown suspicious stops them. Corpses mark the trio's path.

In Star City, another trio awaits them: a pair of detectives dispatched from L.A., one white and one black, and the local sheriff, the good ole boy Dale "Hurricane" Dixon. Married, the father of a small daughter, and bored with small-town police work, Dale dreams of joining the L.A. Police Department. His delusion fills the Angelenos with sarcastic merriment, which Dale, unfortunately, overhears. Now he must prove himself to these sneering cops whom he and his wife entertained so hospitably. And he does so--in the most disastrous fashion.

If the near-parallel configuration of the two multiracial trios is supposed to have some deeper meaning, it escapes me. But each trio is skillfully drawn. Pluto is a buttoned-up, respectable-businessman type, a cool strategist; he just happens to enjoy carving up people with his handy knife. Ray is a tattooed, pony-tailed, trigger-happy slob, yet he has something that appeals to the sexy, inscrutable Fantasia, whose attitude toward men, sex, and crime we must gradually piece together. Similarly, we have to figure out why someone as smart as Pluto teams up with someone like Ray. Is this cat using this ape to remove hot chestnuts from the fire for him? Or is it the fun of bossing a white man around? On the other hand, in the motel rooms they share on their flight, Pluto must put up with the greedy lovemaking of Ray and Fantasia.

Again, the trio of lawmen is an interesting study in contrasts, although the white and the black detective are alike in their scorn for Dale, who, poor soul, began as their devoted fan. But such admiration is hard to take. So the potential for some sort of eruption is always suspensefully present.

Especially right is the atmosphere-- the conversations and silences these juxtapositions generate. And finally, albeit briefly, racial undertones do come to the fore as Dale, a/k/a Hurricane, and Lila, a/k/a Fantasia, meet up as something, it turns out, more than strangers. It is one of the strengths of the film that matters of black and white are not treated in a black-and-white way. One of the funniest, and also wisest, scenes is the meal at the Dixons' during which the sheriff, forgetting the blackness of one of the detectives, casually refers to "niggers." Here as elsewhere there is awareness of bonds between people that defy the divisiveness of language, mores, and social structure.

Ultimately, though, it is acting and directing that make the difference here. As noted, Franklin's direction botches the topography of the early scenes. Later, it goes in sporadically for arty camera angles. In the death of the state trooper, what really happens remains hidden from view--a deliberate effect, perhaps, but ill-advised, I think. And in the climactic finale there is an impassive black shantydweller somewhere at the periphery of the action; he is playing his mouth organ, and the camera periodically cuts to him as a quasi-symbolic refrain, and to increase the suspense by delaying the main action. It is both a cliche and artsy-fartsy. But all this is more than made up for by pacing that knows the value of leisureliness in the right places and the worth of leaving certain things to the imagination.

Moreover, humor is put to excellent use in unlikely situations, as when everything depends on a child's erratic responses. Humor, too, mitigates the foolishness of the sheriff, who, for a film noir, is an unusually complex character. Though childish and even obtuse, he is allowed to transcend his limitations and achieve something damn near tragic stature. Similar claims can be entertained for Fantasia. And then there is that admirable lightness of touch, as in the fleeting but highly idiosyncratic caress Dale bestows on his sleeping wife.

There is very fine ensemble acting from Bill Paxton, a fully rounded Dale; Michael Beach, a coiled cobra of a Pluto; Billy Bob Thornton, an all too humanly inhuman Ray; Jim Meltzer and Earl Billings, the megalopolitan detectives stymied by rusticity; and any number of others. It may be unfortunate that Dale's wife is somewhat patronized by the script and casting; though here, too, there are redeeming touches. And best of all, perhaps, is the Fantasia of Cynda Williams, a performance that brings thoroughgoing emotional confusion into sharp and touching focus. Only near the end, when she is given a rather too literary and philosophical speech, is there a touch of preciosity and propaganda that even Miss Williams cannot completely salvage. But she and Bill Paxton, in their crucial encounter, elevate a coolly efficient genre picture into something higher, more human.