Customer Reviews

First Snow

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The trouble with fortune telling is that you don't get the whole story. Even seers have limitations with the fortunes they dispense. This is the premise of another chilling suspense story starring Guy Pearce in a maverick role for which we've become accustomed since `Memento' Memento. Sharply written by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostly (sp?) and keenly directed by Mark Fergus, 'First Snow' has to be one of the edgiest and most suspenseful thrillers of the year.

Jimmy Starks (Pearce) is stranded at a remote garage. His car needs servicing, and he's like many impatient businessmen on the go. He can't get repairs immediately, so he's stuck there for the evening. Moseying into the honky-tonk bar, he finds an opportunity to see a psychic in a nearby mobile home. Vacaro (J.R. Simmons, Peter Parker's boss) vends his futures according to the funds, but is quick to pick up on what Jimmy can afford. This piques both his interest and his skepticism. Soon he shares a stream of fortune: He'll be on the road before the next day. His pro basketball team, the Timberwolves, will win decisively, and he'll receive a windfall from Dallas. In the midst of their meeting, Vacaro's clasped hand shakes and trembles until he lets go. Vacaro is shaken and gives Jimmy all of his money back. Throughout Jimmy sees the experience as entertainment. All but the first proposition sounds preposterous, and the only thing that seems amiss is the refund...until fortune's hand plays out for him.

Leo, Jimmy's business partner, is a skeptic. His explanations square with most of ours: Jimmy has a Timberwolves' bumper sticker. It is the power of suggestion. If you go looking "under every rock," [fortune] is bound to show up where he tells you. When playing car games as a child, if you say, "Spot the Volkswagons," you find them all over the place. Jimmy must find out for himself, so he returns to the fortune teller for more answers. This time a somber seer tells him he hasn't long to live. He is safe until "the first snow".

There are many ways to accept this news. One is to take advantage of life like a terminal patient. Another is to fight for life. Jimmy chooses the latter. Ominously, we see near misses and a foreboding message in the mail. He first rashly blames a Mexican associate (Rick Gonzales). Then he finds out about an old friend and business partner, Vincent, is out of prison on parole. He seeks his mother to find out more. He rashly goes to his mobile home and only draws more attention to himself. Calling the police, missing work, investigating his wayward friend, and trying to drive until he misses the "first snow," he stops to take stock of matters. Then, he must decide whether to keep running or to face his future.

Much like an updated `Twilight Zone' adventure, `First Snow' plays upon our curiosity with tight and tense scenes that quickly get and keep our interest. After seeing this movie a comparison to `Premonition' Premonition (Full Screen) proves that execution and editing can be crucial to a film's success. Gripping like `Wind Chill' Wind Chill just before it, `First Snow' offers one bracing and suspenseful chiller.

This taut little thriller, directed by first-timer Mark Fergus, is a real gripper with intelligence to spare and some seriously powerful stuff. The protagonist/anti-hero, Jimmy Starks (Guy Pearce in a role that hauntingly echoes his work in "Memento"), is a salesman/con man who easily slides in and out of legit selling and shady conning. Pearce carries this off beautifully, and is ably abetted in his downward spiraling tale by J.K. Simmons as Vaccaro, the strangely prescient soothsayer, William Fichtner as Jimmy's friend Ed, and some really great unknown actors in other supporting roles, principally the actor playing Jimmy's boss, who will hopefully go on to do more work on film (he's terrific).

Jimmy accidentally meets up with fortune teller Vaccaro who accurately predicts a win by a local college basketball team that Jimmy's bet on, as well as a windfall from an on-the-level business deal that Jimmy's involved in. What Vaccaro does not predict is the riveting, ever-darker series of events that ensue when Jimmy finds out that a former partner of his in a crooked scam, Vince, is now out on parole from a stretch in the slammer.

For my money, this is the best American noir thriller of the year so far, and would make a great addition, once it's out on DVD, to anyone's library of neo-noirs. The ending in particular is really strong--always the mark of a well-made film.

Try not to miss this. It's great.

In the city of Damascus a man went to a seer and asked his fortune. The seer said, look to your affairs, Death comes for you tonight. The man thought he saw Death in the city square later that day, so he fled to Aleppo. No sooner had he arrived than he was met by Death, who said, I was surprised when I saw you today in Damascus, for I was told to take you in Aleppo.

Guy Pearce returns as smarmy salesman Jimmy Starks, who is told by a fortune teller that he has "no more road, no more tomorrow." Exactly how and when is not revealed, but he has until the first snow. As this is New Mexico, Jimmy could possibly live until a ripe old age. Jimmy writes the old coot off as a con man, until the predictions came true one by one.

This movie is as much philosophical musings as a noir thriller it was billed as. Do we want to know the date of our death? Or how we will die? Every moment of life is lived while willfully ignoring the certainty of death. Why eat, work, brush your teeth at all if that fact looms constantly over every thought? Humans have to put it aside to get into a car, a plane, go skydiving. All of us think: we WILL return home tonight. Some may say they want to know when they will die, so they can put their affairs in order, say good-bye, but will they really? It's a paradox, we want to know our future so we can change it.

Jimmy began to see every event as a possible mean for his dispatch. The hangup calls could be a busted telemarketing auto-dialer, or is it an old friend who Jimmy sold down the river, calling for payback? The paper target in the mail could be a prank from a worker Jimmy fired, or does he really mean business?

There's a great scene when the small flakes begins to come down and Jimmy peels off in his car to hole up in a motel, sitting by the window clutching a gun and watching the outside behind the slats of the blinds. Then it really snowed, and the next morning the whole landscape is covered in white. There's no avoiding it now, it snowed, and he can't hide forever. Jimmy stumbles out of the motel, and throws the gun away.

This movie has a similar feel to Fargo: the desolate roads that stretch on endlessly toward the unforgiving mountains, the wind-eroded landscape of the desert, the humanity dwarfed by a crushing sense of inevitability. I'm not so interested in the other plot of the childhood friendship gone bad, although it provides the thriller element and contributes to plotline of Jimmy's growing paranoia.

The director let the story unfold at its own pace, some may say it's slow, but it's no slower than necessary. Jerry Bruckheimer would have Jimmy tear down the fortune teller's trailer in 5 minutes demanding to know what he knows, but Mark Fergus lets Jimmy go from a doubter to a wavering believer, and then to an angry and then finally broken down man. Some films are character study, First Snow could be its sub-genre: character-in-situation study. This is a very good film, but not a great film. Despite having most everything in place, the whole is not as good as the sum of its part. Why? Because for all its elaborate setup, it does not tell you more, or give you any more insight than the fable quoted at the begining of this review.

This film starts off with much promise. Guy Pearce is a really interesting actor, as is William Fichtner. Their nuanced performances are the reason for my 4 stars. Somewhere around three quarters of the way through things get a bit formulaic. Also, the women characters in this don't really hold up their end of things. That might partly be a failing of the Director and/or the script. I appreciated the New Mexican locale and the philosophical underpinnings, although this would've been better if the trajectory of the storyline had been allowed to meander into unexpected areas and the dark tone given a respite. Overall this film achieves a lot on a low budget.

Guy Pearce was great in Momento - but that was a Christopher Nolan film. First Snow reminds me a bit of Momento mixed with Insomnia but with markedly less dramatic results. Somehow, somewhere, I didn't quite connect with this 100 %.

The dust jacket of the DVD tells us why this is a compelling premise - Guy Pearce plays Jimmy, a man who's trying to fight against his own fate. And with no surprises, this is exactly what plays out with few surprises. Or rather, the twists aren't quite twisted enough, leaving the audience with an average noir-psychological drama aftertaste. First Snow almost but doesn't quite hit the mark.

This is not the easiest of genres to satisfy demanding viewers. The film won't quite give you the chills or make your head scratch - it's watchable but it won't have you on the edge of your seats.

Does such a thing as Fate truly determine the course of our lives - or are human beings just naturally prone to look for patterns where none may actually exist? That is the metaphysical question raised by "First Snow," an extraordinarily well-made and engrossing psychological thriller starring Guy Pearce as a cynical traveling salesman whose life is turned upside down when a roadside fortuneteller (J.K. Simmons) predicts he will die before the first snow falls. Yet Jimmy Starks soon learns that being the target of such a dire forecast may not be an entirely bad thing, for it can, if used properly, serve to build character, liberate the soul, help one find inner peace and self-acceptance, and, ironically, give one a brand new lease on life (however short that life may turn out to be).

Adding to Jimmy's problems is the sudden return into his life of an ex-business partner whom Jimmy sold up the river a few years back. Jimmy is suddenly forced to live his life on a two-way track: running from perceived threats while, at the same time, learning to embrace his Sword of Damacles fate.

In this beautifully paced and exquisitely shot film, director Mark Fergus makes the high desert setting an integral part of the movie`s otherworldly mood and tone. Fergus' screenplay - co-written with Hawk Ostby - is shot through with a tremendous sense of foreboding and menace, while Cliff Martinez' haunting score greatly enhances that effect.

Pearce is riveting as a man who finds himself simultaneously contending with the wildly disparate feelings of fear, desperation, resignation and hope. No one plays these kinds of brooding characters better than Pearce and he is clearly at the top of his game here. He gets fine support from the likes of Rick Gonzalez, William Fichtner and Piper Perabo as the people Jimmy makes amends to as he prepares himself for his preordained date with destiny.

Unfortunately, as with most films of this type, the buildup is ultimately more satisfying than the follow-through. Yet, even though the ending is a trifle flatfooted compared to the rest of the story, the movie, as a whole, is so rich in atmosphere and performance that you'll be glad you took the journey.

The idea of this film can be summed up in a sentence: we think we are free, but the parameters of our existence are not really up to us. This is more or less stated in the opening monologue. Most decent films have a theme, usually as simple and as well worn as this one -- but in the case of this film it felt too much like the story was in the service of the theme, rather than the theme being integral to the story. That's what I mean by a "concept film" -- one that is designed around and in order to illustrate a fairly straightforward idea.

First, you have to pick a character who denies the theme -- in this case a guy who thinks life is what he decides to make of it, who thinks his destiny is up to the measure of his own ambition. Of course, he's a salesman. That's perfect, because it means he's on the road a lot -- and being on the road is a nice and easy metaphor for the path of life Then, you've got to set up a scenario that challenges his denial of the theme. In this case, it's a bit contrived: a fortune teller who predicts his demise. You've got to give him reasons to live: a girlfriend who he's not quite committed to (because, of course, he doesn't like to have his future set in stone). Finally, you've got to set up a back story that will provide the causal mechanism whereby his fate meets up with him: an old friend he betrayed, now out of prison.

Where the film starts to generate interest is in the idea that while our ultimate destiny is out of our hands -- the ultimate parameters of our existence, the fact we will die, that we have needs, etc. -- we can choose how we will meet this inevitable end. This dimension, however, is not developed very far -- our main guy just makes a shift from denial to acceptance.

The film looks good, the acting is fine throughout, the dialogue (apart from what seems to me an unnecessary reliance on the supernatural abilities of a fortune teller) is plausible. Guy Pearce works for the role -- though he seems to be slumming a bit here, playing it something like a slightly less intense version of Leonard in Memento. That he does have a much wider range than what we already saw in his breakthrough role is evident from another very different but equally superb performance in The Proposition.

I found the film intriguing, and thought it did a good job building and maintaining tension, but it left me unsatisfied in the end -- asking: is that all there is? What the film needed was a clever and satisfying twist that brought home the theme, while deepening and transforming it. What it delivered was a pretty lame twist that did nothing to add to what was already expected.

I am a fan of Guy Pearce and I loved 'Memento'! I was hoping for a little more out of this film. It's not bad and the actors involved give it their all, but it seems to takes too long to get where it's going. It does have some redeeming qualities and some good advice 'not to put off until tomorrow what can be done today'. Procrastinators....are you listening?
;-b

Unctuous salesman Jimmy Starks played by Guy Pearce finds himself with time to kill in a desolate New Mexico town in the Mark Fergus written and directed thriller, "First Snow". Due to unexpected car trouble he decides to get his fortune told by roadside psychic Vacaro played by J.K Simmons. Simmons makes a few predictions about the speed of the auto repair, results of a basketball game and a future windfall that Pearce should expect. The session concludes with a shocking, unhinging response by the seer, making Pearce skeptical of the foretelling.

Pearce begins to have second thoughts when things start occuring according to prediction. He begins to re-examine the self centered relationships he shares with his girlfriend Deirdre played by Piper Perabo and his work colleague Ed Jacomoi played by character actor William Fichtner. He decides to trek back and have Vacaro give him another reading.

Vacaro reluctantly tells the now concerned Pearce that his days are numbered and that he'll be safe until the first snow. This puts Pearce into a paranoic tizzy with every little thing signalling his demise. He suddenly realizes that the threat will most likely come from his ex-partner Vince played by Shea Whigham. Pearce rattted him out and allowed him to take the fall in a money laundering scheme that put him away for three years. He'd just been paroled and Pearce feared retribution. Deciding to face Vince, Pearce puts his life in order, paying his debts, making promises to his girlfriend and solidifying friendships.

The confrontation between the ex-partners results in a startling interaction in which Pearce's fate is ultimately decided.

The desolation of the New Mexican settings with an eye on the changeable weather conditions with threatening snowflakes, helps increase the intrigue in this low budget thriller which ultimately packs quite a wallop. Pearce in a role that has a similar feel to the part he played in the movie "Memento", shines as the oily salesman whose seemingly unfettered life is turned upside down by a prediction of the future.

Guy Pierce plays a man who is intrigued by the future, in First Snow (2006), a little movie that features some interesting characters, sets up some potentially volatile situations, and resolves them in a credible, but not terribly exciting way.

Jimmy Starks (Pierce) is a salesman, on his way home, when he has to stop to get his car repaired. While waiting, Starks grabs a bite to eat in a bar, and tries to interest the owner in his latest hot item, Wurlitzer jukeboxes. Looking to kill time, Starks has his fortune told by a man named Vacaro (J.K. Simmons) who operates out of a trailer. After giving him some cryptic information, the psychic has a violent reaction, and sends Starks on his way.

Starks returns to his normal life with his girlfriend Deidre (Piper Perabo), but when a couple of the fortuneteller's predictions come true, including one concerning a deal involving the Wurlitzers, Starks wonders if there is something more to be learned. He seeks out Vacaro again to get a clarification, but unfortunately the news is not good for Starks, as Vacaro reveals that his time on Earth is short. He will however, live at least until the first snow. Stark's life is further complicated, when he learns that Vincent (Shea Whigham), an old friend who has been doing time in prison, has been paroled. Vincent blames Starks for sending him to prison, and Starks is afraid that Vincent may be planning to kill him.

With some believable characters and situations, First Snow is fairly well written, revealing a situation with elements of mystery, danger, and madness. Guy Pierce gives a solid performance as the paranoid and troubled Starks, who has major issues to deal with, as his life spirals downward. With very little action, this is more of a psychological drama, than a crime thriller. The offbeat story is of some interest, but the grungy settings and downbeat tone, will not be to everyone's taste.