Shot‘s sights are set on John (Sam Rockwell), a dirt-poor hunter who mistakes a young woman for a deer — not necessarily a negative except that a trigger was involved and John’s aim is true. When he tends to her dead body, he finds a lot of cash next to her and assumes it won’t be missed. Wrong!
The backwater woods haven’t played host to a more frightening lot since Winter’s Bone in 2010 (if you don’t count four seasons of TV’s Justified, that is), and the viewer will want to see John make it through to another day, even if the character isn’t wholly innocent.
Rockwell impresses by not doing the usual Sam Rockwell motormouthed swagger, most recently seen in Seven Psychopaths and The Way Way Back; this is a pure dramatic performance. What little humor the film has is in William H. Macy’s toupee. — Rod Lott
This article appears in Jan 8-14, 2014.