During a business trip, a well-respected professor runs into an old flame of his. The passage of time hasn't been kind to her, although she's still a beautiful woman. Once a jolly, lively, carefree creature, she has turned into an intrusive drunk with all the clinging power of a limpet mine...
I'm sorry to say that "Take one false step" has a number of problems. To begin with, the movie seems to hesitate about the kind of tale it wants to tell, before settling on an uneasy mix of melodrama, comedy and crime thriller. Now genre benders can be delightful, but here the blend doesn't work well. Given some of the ingredients - a messy drunk involved with Bad Boys, a vicious fight with a guard dog, a desperate race against the clock - the whole might have worked better as a gritty urban noir. Moreover, the plot supposes that a single case (the disappearance of a woman believed to have been killed) would generate wide-spread interest and galvanize both the police and the public into action, to the point where everybody and his uncle would be looking for suspects. I think it is fair to say that most people would only regard this as one news item out of many, especially if the suspicious disappearance had happened in another city. Finally there's a problem with the male protagonist.
The male protagonist is supposed to be a well-respected and visionary professor with an admirable war record. Yet he is shown making one poor decision after another. He is also as helpless as a thirteen-year-old when it comes to extricating himself from painful social situations. Put the man in a time machine, transport him to the Roman era (let's say the time period of Marius and Sulla) and he'd be toast before sunset.
To look on the bright side, "Take one false step" has a very clever "race against the clock" idea. And actress Shelley Winters is memorably obnoxious as a clingy drunk with a taste for strong sensations.
I'm sorry to say that "Take one false step" has a number of problems. To begin with, the movie seems to hesitate about the kind of tale it wants to tell, before settling on an uneasy mix of melodrama, comedy and crime thriller. Now genre benders can be delightful, but here the blend doesn't work well. Given some of the ingredients - a messy drunk involved with Bad Boys, a vicious fight with a guard dog, a desperate race against the clock - the whole might have worked better as a gritty urban noir. Moreover, the plot supposes that a single case (the disappearance of a woman believed to have been killed) would generate wide-spread interest and galvanize both the police and the public into action, to the point where everybody and his uncle would be looking for suspects. I think it is fair to say that most people would only regard this as one news item out of many, especially if the suspicious disappearance had happened in another city. Finally there's a problem with the male protagonist.
The male protagonist is supposed to be a well-respected and visionary professor with an admirable war record. Yet he is shown making one poor decision after another. He is also as helpless as a thirteen-year-old when it comes to extricating himself from painful social situations. Put the man in a time machine, transport him to the Roman era (let's say the time period of Marius and Sulla) and he'd be toast before sunset.
To look on the bright side, "Take one false step" has a very clever "race against the clock" idea. And actress Shelley Winters is memorably obnoxious as a clingy drunk with a taste for strong sensations.