David M. Rosenthal's white-knuckle thriller starts with a bang: a single shot, aimed at a lone deer, that hits and kills a young woman. The hunter, John Moon (Sam Rockwell, SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS), watches her die before discovering a box of money near her body. In a desperate panic, he takes the cash — hiring a low-rent lawyer (William H. Macy, FARGO) to fight his wife's (Kelly Reilly, FLIGHT) divorce suit — and attempts to cover up the killing. But when he discovers that the money belonged to a group of hardened criminals, the hunter becomes the hunted in this tense cat-and-mouse struggle in the backwoods of West Virginia.
Recently separated from his family, John Moon must cope with poverty in upstate New York by poaching in its wilderness. He shoots and wounds a deer, but, startled by another noise, wildly shoots in another direction. He walks toward what he believes is his bounty, when the wounded deer charges him from elsewhere. He realizes he has shot something else and finds a teenaged girl dying from his gunshot. Panicked, he searches the area and finds her belongings, including a box containing $100,000. He takes the cash, hides the girl's body, but then becomes tracked by criminals wanting their money returned.
A Single Shot is a 2013 crime drama-thriller film directed by David M. Rosenthal and written by Matthew F. Jones, based on his own novel of same name. The film stars Sam Rockwell, William H. Macy, Ted Levine, Kelly Reilly and Jason Isaacs.
