Title: One False Move
Year: 1992
Director: Carl Franklin
Writers: Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson
Stars: Bill Paxton, Cynda Williams, Billy Bob Thornton, Michael Beach
The Story: Three drug dealers pull off a violent heist in L.A. and head for Arkansas. LA. police detectives are one step ahead of them and head east to await their arrival with an unsophisticated small-town sheriff.

Why It’s Great: Most first-time screenplays have the same problem: everybody talks the same, or, almost as bad, likable people talk one way and unlikable people talk the other way. Everybody here always has a unique voice, black or white, cop or criminal, and each one of them has at least some humanity and inhumanity inside them. I have two big rules for writing believable dialogue: “People only want what they want” and “Nobody listens to each other”. It’s hard to hold yourself to those rules. You have to know everything about your characters, all of their history and hopes and dreams, but then you have to remind yourself that your characters won’t ever understand those things about each other (or even about themselves, half the time.)

Find two more reasons at Cockeyed Caravan.