Fall Time

Director: Paul Warner
Screenwriters: Steve Alden, Paul Skemp

Institute History

  • 1995 Sundance Film Festival

Description

Fall Time is a highly imaginative, strikingly enacted suspense drama which takes place in the late 1950s in a small town in the Midwest. Three recent graduates from the high school are on their way into town to pull off the caper of their adolescent lives. Armed with a starter pistol which belongs to one of the boy’s fathers and a borrowed Lincoln Continental, they intend to stage a murder outside the bank, where one of their party will be “killed” by a blank fired from the pistol, thrown into the trunk of the car, and driven to their secret hideout. There they can listen on the radio to the consternation they have caused.

Unfortunately, they stumble into a real bank robbery, and although they accidently kidnap one of the thugs, they are now suspected of trying to interfere on behalf of another gang. What ensues is bloodier and more horrible than any of them could ever have dreamed. And the boys, now held hostage, must struggle and scheme just to survive.

With a series of plot twists and turns that continually reinvigorate the drama, Fall Time is original and stylized genre filmmaking at its best. Featuring Jason London, David Arquette, and Jonah Blechman as the young men; Mickey Rourke and Stephen Baldwin, both almost iconographically evil as the thieves; and Sheryl Lee as a rather dowdy bank clerk, the film is replete with characters who differ radically from stereotypes. Director Paul Warner demonstrates a remarkable eye for the look, setting, and dress of the period and place. Made with the kind of creative sensibility and attention to detail that distinguish it from the mass marketplace, Fall Time is a pleasure to present.

— Geoffrey Gilmore

Screening Details

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