Last time we reported on A Single Shot, it was 2009 and an up-and-coming young star called Michael Fassbender was attached to take the lead. Fast-forward to now and the film is complete, but stars a ruggedly hirsute Sam Rockwell instead. Heralding its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, a handful of new stills has arrived.
The film started shooting last April, and has managed to stay more-or-less under the movie news radar, despite a powerhouse cast sees Rockwell supported by Willam H. Macy, Jeffrey Wright, Jason Isaacs, Melissa Leo and Kelly Reilly. It's directed by cinematographer and former documentarian David M. Rosenthal (Janie Jones, Falling Up), and written by Matthew F. Jones, who adapted his own novel.
The story involves a hunter, John Moon (Rockwell) who's down on his luck after the loss of his family farm but is able still to put food on the table as a master poacher. On one clandestine foraging mission, however, he both stumbles upon a hidden campsite full of drugs and cash, and accidentally kills a teenage girl. Temptation leads him to cover up the incident and make off with the loot, but its owners have other ideas, and Moon quickly finds himself on the run from people he'd probably rather not have encountered.
Shades of A Simple Plan there, and the pics are kind of superficially reminiscent of last year's excellent The Hunter, although that's probably inevitable when the film's about a loner gunman out in the wilderness. A Single Shot has immediately jumped quite high on our Want To See list, but we can probably expect it to stick to the festival circuit for the immediate future, since there's no distribution deal yet in place.
