Emilia Clarke‘s Rolling Stone cover is another celebration of her Game of Thrones fame (i.e., “Queen of Dragons”). Clarke has been dining out on that hugely popular HBO series for six years now, but gradually realized, as every star of a hit cable series has in the past, that she had to do more rep-wise than the usual usual, which in her case meant wearing that blonde wig and performing the occasional nude scene. The long game required it.

And so last summer Clarke starred in Phillip Noyce‘s Above Suspicion, a fact-based, late-’80s drama about Susan Smith, a drug-addicted Eastern Kentucky mom who lunged at an affair with a married FBI guy named Mark Putnam (Jack Huston) as a possible means of escape from her dead-end existence, but played her hand too hard and wound up dead in the woods.

(l.) Jack Huston as Mark Putnam, (r.) Emilia Clarke as Susan Smith in Phillip Noyce‘s Above Suspicion.

Clarke did good. Her emotionally poignant performance as Smith proves that she can operate above and beyond the realm of Tits and Dragons, and with scrappy conviction to spare. Tart, pushy, believably pugnacious. Clarke is English-born and raised but you’d never know it. Her Susan is the Real McCoy in a trailer-trash way, but she brings heart to the game. In other words she’s affecting, which is to say believably scared to death. What Clarke delivers, trust me, is a lot more than just the usual collection of redneck mannerisms.

Speaking as one who despises rednecks in general and who presumes that the residents of Pikeville, Kentucky, where Smith lived and died, went heavily for Donald Trump last November, it means something that I wound up feeling genuinely sorry for this spunky, self-destructive, long-dead woman whom Clarke has brought back to life.

How do I know all this? Noyce’s film screened last week for a select group of elite blogaroo types, and I can say straight and true that Above Suspicion, which is based on Joe Sharkey’s 1993 true-life novel, is a triple-A, tightly-wound, character-driven genre flick (i.e., rednecks, drug deals, criminals, lawmen, murder, car chases, bank robberies) of the highest and smartest order.

Most people would define “redneck film” as silly escapist trash in the Burt Reynolds mode, but there have been a small handful that have portrayed rural boondock types and their tough situations in ways that are top-tier and real-deal. My favorites in this realm are John Boorman‘s Deliverance, Billy Bob Thornton‘s Sling Blade, and Lamont Johnson‘s The Last American Hero. I’m not saying Noyce’s film is the absolute, dollars-to-donuts equal of these films, but it certainly deserves to stand side by side as a peer, and is absolutely a close relation with a similar straight-cards, no-bullshit attitude.

Noyce always delivers with clarity and discipline but this is arguably the most arresting forward-thrust action flick he’s done since Clear and Present Danger. Plus it boasts a smart, fat-free, pared-down script by Mississippi Burning‘s Chris Gerolmo, some haunting blue-tinted cinematography by Eliot Davis (Out of Sight, Twilight) and some wonderfully concise editing by Martin Nicholson.

Over the just-finished weekend Tatyana and I stayed with Santa Barbara Film Festival honcho Roger Durling and his partner, Dan. They live in an elegant, Spanish-styled, single-story home (brick adobe exterior, stressed clay roof tiles) in a gated Goleta community. On Sunday Dan’s son Alex dropped by and we all went for brunch at the Bacara Resort & Spa, about a mile to the west. During that meal and for the rest of the day we were a fucking gang of five — a posse.

We ate like a posse. We travelled in the same car like a posse. We went to a local Best Buy so I could buy a computer charger, and we all strolled around like the Jets from West Side Story. We walked down to the beach like a posse. We watched Game of Thrones like a posse. At 7 pm we went back to the Bacara for dinner and chowed down like a posse — chuckling, joking, half-owning the room. When one of the Bacara staffers came up to say hello, Roger gestured in our direction and explained to the guy in a soft-spoken, put-on way, “This is my posse.”

I hadn’t hung with a posse since 11th grade. For years I’ve been putting down posses (my animus started with Leonardo DiCaprio‘s pussy posse in the late ’90s) for what seemed like a kind of arrogant, entitled swagger. My mantra had been “be a man and walk alone or with your girlfriend…only immature schmucks walk around in a wolf pack of five or six.” Now I feel differently. It’s nice to hang with a posse. It makes you feel safe and secure and relaxed. They’ve got your back and you’ve got theirs.

Only now can it be told, six days later: I was watching TV last week when I decided to hit the kitchen in a hurry. I was in a slumping, nearly horizontal position on the big blue couch with my legs on the ottoman, so I bolted upright and began my journey. But the material covering the ottoman had been pushed off by Tatyana the night before, and somehow or other the material caught my right foot as I took my first stride. Right away my balance was gone as I began to stagger forward. Before I knew it I was completely off-balance and hurtling toward the dining-room table like George Foreman after that final punch from Muhammud Ali in Zaire. I landed on the right side of the table, causing it to tip over and with it all kinds of stuff — two laptops, a lamp, a coffee cup (shattered), charging wires, pen holders, a mouse pad, a bottle of computer-screen solvent, envelopes. After the table tipped I went with it, of course, and wound up on the floor. No wounds, no bruises, no dents. But Tatyana was watching with fascination and I felt a bit embarassed. Until the moment of impact I hadn’t caused that much domestic wreckage in my entire life.

My bad for not highlighting this Snowman trailer last week or whenever the fuck it surfaced. You can tell this chilly British crime thriller is a standout, in part because you know director Tomas Alfredson (Let The Right One In, Tinker Tailor Solder Spy) has his shit together. Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, J. K. Simmons, Toby Jones, Chloë Sevigny. The Universal release opens on 10.20.17.