Hannah, who has been accepted to be trained for the FBI, excuses her father's behavior because of the loss of his wife several years ago. She is treated poorly by her father, Sheriff Becker, who does not want to include her in the hunt for the fugitives. Hannah, the sheriff's deputy, is invited to join Jay's parents for Thanksgiving dinner. The two get into a fight and Jay, thinking he has killed him and unwilling to return to jail, flees. He confronts his former coach in Detroit, demanding money owed him. Meanwhile, after being released from prison, former boxer Jay calls his parents, retired sheriff Chet and his wife June, to say he'll be home for Thanksgiving. They resolve to cross the Canada–United States border during a blizzard. They decide to split up when their driver is fatally injured in a car crash and Addison murders a state trooper responding to the scene. By the time the film gets to the final showdown, you’ll want to kill him if Addison doesn’t.Deadfall is a 2012 American crime drama film directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, written by Zach Dean, and starring Eric Bana, Olivia Wilde, and Charlie Hunnam.Īfter a successful casino heist, siblings Addison and Liza go on the run in Michigan. Even when one of his other deputies is dying at his feet, Becker takes a moment to cut his daughter down. If there’s a “weaker sex” insult Becker can hurl her way, he will do it. The third family is a sugary-sweet deputy sheriff named Hanna (Kate Mara) and her bully of a dad, Becker (Treat Williams), who is also her boss. How he ends up with Liza in his car, then his life, less so. Given his fugitive state, why he decided to drop by and see Mom (Sissy Spacek) and risk tangling with estranged Dad (Kris Kristofferson) over Thanksgiving dinner is a mystery. On his first day out, he has managed to get into a new mess that has put him on the run too. Better, but not by much, is the situation of newly paroled, former boxing champ Jay (Charlie Hunnam). Theirs is the most twisted of the three families under the microscope, colored by hints of incest and murder. You know from the few moments we observe these two in the car, with Liza in a glittery barely there, that something is off about the relationship. Addison and Liza set off on foot wearing formal wear (a high-end casino, I guess) in blizzard conditions and in opposite directions with the hope that at least one of them will get away. The deer and icy roads end the run, as well as the life of the driver and a state trooper, who happens upon the crash. Regardless, the action begins with a casino heist that has gone south, so Addison and Liza, the brother-and-sister act that pulled if off, head north toward the Canadian border. Maybe it’s a case of taking studio notes too literally or the director’s involvement in revising? In other cases, the dialogue is so ludicrously off - either unnecessary, or unnecessarily misogynistic if a cop is doing the talking - that it’s hard to believe the same person wrote it. Some of the language is smart, sinister and ironic in just the right ways, particularly when Addison, Eric Bana’s serial-killing mastermind, delivers it. Written by first-timer Zach Dean, the premise - heist gone bad, desperate fugitives, damaged families, a surreal Thanksgiving dinner - was packed with potential. It is the screenplay’s strangely schizophrenic sensibility that’s harder to understand. He didn’t have to suffer through what happens next.Īustrian filmmaker Stefan Ruzowitzky, who won a foreign-language Oscar in 2008 for “The Counterfeiters,” another dark morality tale, has a keen eye for the scenic possibilities of the snowy rural outpost of upper Michigan where the film is set. And when Olivia Wilde’s lost girl Liza says, “You don’t want to take me home,” well, that should not be taken lightly. Bad roads, bad weather, bad family dynamics are equally problematic. Like the deer in the headlights that opens the thriller “Deadfall,” this is a film about the tragic consequences of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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