Showtimes & Tickets Enter Zip Code:

FIRST SNOW
Directed by: Mark Fergus.
Produced by: Bryan Furst, Sean Furst, Tom Lassally, Robyn Meisinger & Bob Yari.
Written by: Fergus & Hawk Otsby.
Director of Photography: Eric Edwards.
Edited by: Jay Lash Cassidy.
Music by: Cliff Martinez.
Released by: Yari Film Group.
Country of Origin: USA. 101 min. Rated PG-13.
With: Guy Pearce, Piper Perabo, William Fichtner, J.K. Simmons, Rick Gonzalez & Shea Whigham.

Not too strangely, Guy Pearce returns to territory that one might say is a little familiar. His character in First Snow, Jimmy Starks, shares a level of paranoia with his character in Memento. The comparisons could be made right there on that basis, yet first-time director Mark Fergus seems wary of making his film an all-out neo-noir, which is maybe why his film lacks the fiery grit of Pearce’s previous entry into “what-the-hell” land.

At the start, he plays Starks as a slick, bulls***ing businessman with a wide grin and a way about him that is believable, up to a point (the character, I mean, not Pearce’s performance, which is better). Starks has a successful career selling various wares like tiles and jukeboxes, and a fairly tepid romance going on with Deidre (Piper Perabo).

After his car breaks down, and while waiting for it to be repaired, Starks meets in a small rat hole of a dive a fortune teller, who is fairly modest about his abilities, but whose premonition of death for Starks will send shockwaves that will permeate the film. At first, Starks tries to brush off the prophecy, but other predictions come true, stirring him to think something terrible will happen. This leads him to mistakenly believe his impending death might come via his old business partner/childhood friend Vincent (Shea Whigham), who just got out of jail for a stint based on a mishap when he and Starks were part of a shady scheme down in Mexico.

This is the meatiest psychological chunk of Starks’ story and the picture. Up until then, it’s been a bit of a shallow, as the predication by some coot (albeit this coot being J.K. Simmons, much more low-key here than his boisterous Spider-Man supporting role) is nothing new. I seem to remember an even shallower version of this story in the awful Life or Something Like It with Angelina Jolie. However, what makes this a fascinating movie, in part, is not the obvious transformation of this flawed salesman into a man who faces his existential crisis, but that he’s portrayed in such an unsympathetic light.

I was glued to the screen upon the arrival of Vincent and not knowing whether Starks could ever make up for screwing over his friend, no matter how crazy he is. After Vincent makes multiple threatening phone calls, Starks scopes out Vincent’s run-down shack of a home, and the mind games begin, including a 10-minute stretch where Starks isolates himself off from his work, Deirdre, and life altogether, with a pistol in hand and an eye looking outside of a motel window. If only for a few minutes here and there, the director and his collaborator cook up some amazingly tense moments in the neo-noir vein, leading up to a satisfying climax between the two old friends. This, on top of Pearce delivering another excellent turn as a character on the edge of sanity, makes this a meaningful excursion, though conventional in spots (like the simplistic hot-cold romance between Starks and his girlfriend). Jack Gattanella
March 21, 2007