"Get Low"
(PG-13, 2010, 100 minutes)There's one in nearly every good folk yarn or fairy tale: the mysterious oldster living alone in the woods. In the case of the fact-based and transporting "Get Low," he's a loner who, in an unlikely instance of self-promotion, comes to be known as the Mysterious Hermit of Caleb County, and he's played with unerring understatement by Robert Duvall in one of his finest performances. Duvall's Felix Bush is based on the Tennessee recluse who in 1938, five years before his death, threw himself a funeral party that received national press coverage. The lean and eloquent screenplay by Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell contrives an element of suspense concerning 40-year-old events, secrets Felix has held close and needs, at last, to divulge. Bill Murray plays the town's desperate-for-business funeral director, Frank. More conflicted is his assistant, Buddy (Lucas Black), a sincere young family man with a worried brow. Perhaps no one understands Felix's singularity better than the widow (Sissy Spacek) who once loved him.
"Killshot"
(R, 2008, 84 minutes)Armand 'Blackbird' Degas (Mickey Rourke) isn't a perfect hit man, as his first scene in "Killshot" makes clear, but he at least is diligent at the art of leaving no living witness behind. Or at least that used to be the case until he tripped, fell into a bizarre partnership with Richie Nix (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and participated in a disastrous hit job that left no one dead and two witnesses (Diane Lane and Thomas Jane as Carmen and Wayne, respectively) alive and talking. This, obviously, cannot stand. "Killshot" doesn't make a huge production of its premise: The killers are chasing the innocents, and while there's the extracurricular matter of our witnesses heading into the last chapter of a marriage gone wrong, even that isn't used to excess. Blackbird's a well-written heavy whom you almost can root for, Richie's a psychotically hammy nutjob who is fun to root against, and while nothing "Killshot" does breaks any narrative or stylistic ground, it's a dependably engaging thriller that builds up nicely and pays off handsomely.
