The title of “One Shot,” a new action movie starring Scott Adkins, Ryan Phillippe and Ashley Greene Khoury, and now available on VOD, is a double entendre of a sort. The adrenalized action heroes at the heart of the film have one shot to quell an attack, and director James Nunn has cleverly filmed all the action in “real time,” using camera tricks to make it look like this was shot in one, long continuous take.
The story begins with a squad of Navy SEALs led by Lt. Blake Harris (Adkins) airlifting junior CIA analyst Zoe Anderson (Khoury) to a remote Guantanamo Bay-esque prison to a “United Nations of terror” suspects. Anderson’s job is to extract Amin Mansur (Waleed Elgadi), a British national who pleads his innocence, but is suspected to be a mastermind of a 9/11 style dirty-bomb attack on all three branches of the American government.
Deputy Site Manager Tom Shields (Phillippe) stalls the prisoner’s release, inadvertently allowing time for the ruthless terrorist Charef (Jess Liaudin) and his insurgents to overrun the place, freeing captives and trying to kill Mansur before he can spill the beans on the plot to bring down the government.
“One Shot” isn’t about the characters, political subtext or even the siege story. It’s all about the “one shot” gimmick, wall-to-wall video-game style gunplay and a sense of urgency.
For the most part the gimmick works, although, if you’re like me, you’ll be taken out of the story as you try and see where the subliminal edits are. It’s a distraction that fades as the running times passes because director Nunn choreographs the action expertly, creating a sense of unpredictable immediacy. You never really know who is around the next corner or hiding behind a pile of sandbags. It’s edgy you-are-there filmmaking, aided by cinematographer Jonathan Iles, that makes the generic story and stereotyped characters somewhat interesting.
The relentless violence, however, becomes tiering after a while. The first gunshot happens around the 19-minute mark and the bullet ballet continues pretty much nonstop for the rest of the running time. There are breaks in the action, usually as someone tends to a wounded person, but they are few and far between.
“One Shot” is a b-movie with efficient brutality and some edge-of-your-seat scenes, but the script is as riddled with clichés—”Sometimes it is harder to save a life than it is to save one,” intones Anderson when the going gets tough.—as the characters are with bullet holes.
Sometimes watching a truly bad action movie can be fun. You get to sit back, turn off the brain for ninety minutes as good guys assault bad guys for your entertainment. Then there are movies like “The 2nd,” now on VOD, that not only assaults your intelligence along with the bad guys, sucking away 93 minutes of your valuable downtime.
A cut-rate “Die Hard,” “The 2nd” sees Ryan Phillippe as Vic Davis, a Delta Force commando, whose son Sean (Jack Griffo) is dating Erin Walton (Lexi Simonsen), a Supreme Court judge’s daughter. When Vic swings by their nearly deserted college during Christmas break to pick up Sean for some much need father and son time, he walks into a Russian plot to kidnap Erin.
The baddies, led by a gun-happy domestic terrorist named Driver (Casper Van Dien), want to swing the judge’s vote on the Second Amendment, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms. Vic, armed only with his Green Beret training and his wits, must fight to save not only Sean and Erin, but the integrity of the Second Amendment.
That the baddies are unaware that a Supreme Court judge cannot reverse a constitutional amendment is the most minor of this movie’s problems. Where to start? Perhaps with the porn movie production values? How about the cut-and-pasted dialogue like, “Believe it or not, we’re the good guys!”? I will “The 2nd” points for having one character bellow, “I ate man in gulag!” but that one fleeting moment of over-the-top dialogue simply highlighted what’s wrong with the whole movie.
“The 2nd” is just not fun. B-movie action flicks should be spirited and outrageous. There should be exaggerated villains and conflicted heroes who know how to throw down when the going gets tough. A few clichés? That’s cool if there is some actual excitement or action instead of a serving of warmed-over leftovers from other, better movies.
“The Bang Bang Club” would like to be an important movie about what happens to people when they’ve seen too much violence, too much inhumanity, just too much. In this case it’s a group of war photographers documenting South Africa’s struggle between the African National Congress and government-backed tribal factions. These men are up close and personal to the action, so why is it that the film and its message rings hollow?
Based on a book by Greg Marinovich and Joao Silver, two of the daredevil Bang Bang Club photographers—so named because they get close to real gunfire—the movie documents a year in the lives of Marinovich (Ryan Phillippe), Silva (Neels Van Jaarsveld), Kevin Carter (Taylor Kitsch) and Ken Oosterbroek (Frank Rautenbach). They are white photo journalists who prowl the townships looking for action. Photos are taken, Pulitzers are won but eventually they learn of the price they must pay for getting that close to the action.
“The Bang Bang Club” plays as though it is at cross purposes with itself. On one hand it wants us to believe that Marinovich is devastated after he photographs a brutal murder as it is happening. Fine, explore that. But just as he’s going down the rabbit hole of depression—we know this because he becomes moody and argumentative—he also wins a Pulitzer Prize for the resulting picture and suddenly, the moral push and pull disappears and he’s popping the corks on champagne bottles.
It feels like every time the movie gets close to uncovering something that may feel authentic it shies away and goes for a Hollywood cliché instead.
It’s too bad because there is a great story here. This just isn’t it.
