Set Adrift

A knotty plot prevents First Snow from sticking.

by Cindy Fuchs

BLOOD ON THE DASH: Jimmy Starks (Guy Pearce) realizes he doesn't have enough for the toll. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Any movie that finds a place for Jackie Burroughs begins with bonus points. Playing the mother of a vengeance-minded parolee and drug addict, she's addled, coughing and gnarly in the way that old white women living in trailers in movies tend to be. But Mrs. McClure is also possessed of strange grace, such that her couple of scenes in First Snow reveal a canny understanding of exactly what went wrong for her son, the scruffy, shadowy, egregiously rattled Vincent (Shea Whigham).

Mrs. McClure's first appearance is the occasion for the film's protagonist, the odiously named Jimmy Starks (Guy Pearce), to do the right thing. But he can't quite do it, and she makes clear this is the way he's always been when she worries for Vincent, whom she claims not to have seen since his parole some weeks ago. "You should have looked out for him," she sighs. When Jimmy protests by generalizing, "We were young and stupid," she stops him short: "You weren't stupid, Jimmy."

Thus accused, Jimmy spends most of First Snow trying to avoid what appears to be his fate. A fast-talking, self-absorbed traveling salesman with a burgeoning notion toward classic Wurlitzer 1015 jukeboxes, he stumbles on too much knowledge while waiting for his car to be repaired. Bored in a desert-y New Mexican pit stop, he gets a psychic reading from Vacaro (J.K. Simmons), whose Airstream is filled with wooden animals, bones and trinkets. The reading is typically dramatic, with Vacaro slipping into some kind of trance, his hand shaking uncontrollably in contact with Jimmy's, his immediate declaration that the session is over punctuated when he gives back his money. This is an ugly fate, he suggests, and he wants nothing to do with it.

All this mystical commotion earns Jimmy's tough-guyish scorn, until he sees that some of the seer's throwaway comments turn true (the Timberwolves win a game, a business deal comes through). What if, as Vacaro says, Jimmy's "noisy mind, cluttered with fears" has mystically found access to his future? (It's of no small value to the movie that Pearce makes this noisiness compelling in quiet ways.) When Vacaro reveals that Jimmy has only until the first snow to live, the un-stupid salesman goes into an overdrive of manipulations, trying to contain what seems destined to rush out of control. Even his seeming descent into chaos (as he presumes death to be) is some mechanism's plan.

Maybe he should make a commitment to his patient girlfriend, Deirdre (Piper Perabo), or maybe he can bully an ex-employee (Rick Gonzalez), whom he suspects of violent threats. And perhaps he can persuade Vincent not to wreak revenge. The movie cleverly lays out his options, none especially logical, all possibly hopeful. But, as Mrs. McClure observes, Jimmy is not stupid. The plot just increasingly turns too knotty and fantastic to make sense for him.

(c_fuchs@citypaper.net)

First Snow | directed by Mark Fergus | A Furst Films production