One Shot (2021).
Directed by James Nunn
Written by Jamie Russell and James Nunn
Starring Scott Adkins, Ashley Greene, Waleed Elgadi, and a really good camera man
The Stage.
An elite squad of Navy SEALs on a covert mission to transport a prisoner off a CIA black site island prison are trapped when insurgents attack.
The Review.
One Shot could be used to describe the soldiers predicament - one shot to complete their mission and get off of the island with the prisoner, but it most certainly refers to the gimmick used to make the film - the entire thing is one shot. I know there are a lot of people that are absolutely against gimmick films - meaning the only appeal of the film is said gimmick, and that without it, the film doesn’t really work. Past examples are films that are only really interesting when seen in 3D, or 1981’s Polyester, which introduced the scratch and sniff “Oderama” to theater-goers. One take films (or ‘oners’) aren’t new - films like 2014’s Academy Award winning Birdman was made to appear like one take, and a year later, the film Victoria was made legitimately only using one take. When you watch a film like this, the real measure is, “is it as good without the gimmick?” In this case, the answer is no, which makes One Shot all the more impressive.
When looked at from a script perspective, it’s a pretty standard DTV action flick. It’s got a pretty contrived script - the one man who can stop a bomb from going off is locked in a compound, so it’s up to the SEAL team to get him out before Washington DC detonates. It’s filled with eye-roll-worthy dialogue and pretty stock characters. Shot in a traditional sense, this would probably be a forgettable little siege film with pretty basic action, but the real charm of One Shot lies in the craft it would take to create something like this.
I feel like I’m pretty adept at finding the cuts in sequences that are supposed to look like one take, and I only noticed one moment in here where it was a definite cut. The rest looked pretty seamless unless I just missed it. We start on a helicopter and land on the island base. The rest of the film takes place in and around the base, as a transport truck doubling for a terrorist clown car rams through the front gate and then expels dozens of disposable NPCs. The film is then wall to wall action as Jake, played by Scott Adkins, works with his team to hold off the terrorists until help arrives. The thin story moves along at a brisk pace as they stop every few seconds to put down bad guys. The camera then floats between SEAL and terrorist, and we spend some time with the maniacal Hakim Charef (played by Jess Liaudin) who’s running the insurgents. He’s brutal and shows absolutely no mercy. A scene in which he walks with a youngster, explaining the honor of having a bomb vest strapped on so that he can destroy a hallway blockade is particularly chilling, and because of the gimmick, we get to see the entire conversation as they enter the hallway up through the attempt, certainly giving the actors playing the SEALs a breather at the same time.
Because it’s all done in one take, there’s not a whole lot of time for backstory or personality, but somehow I still ended up caring about several of the Navy SEALs, particularly Brandon Whitaker (played by Emmanuel Imani). To the film’s credit, there are some surprising deaths as well, and again, because of the way it’s shot, there are no sentimental moments, no slow motion shots, no flashbacks or montages. Characters you’ve spent a significant amount of time with get a bullet to the head and just…die. It’s unceremonious and cold, and I actually really liked that aspect of the film. Adkins does the heavy lifting and the amount of cardio that goes into a film like this boggles the mind. His performance comes with some neat small touches, like changing a mag when it’s still half-full and putting it back into his pocket instead of chucking it onto the ground like so many cinematic soldiers do.
The End.
One Shot is a film that falls into so many standard action movie cliches, but this is one of those cases where I didn’t care because of its gimmick. It’s an entertaining ride with superb levels of technicality that deserve to be seen. The actors put on solid performances and you can’t help but think of how stressful it must have been to perform in this movie, as one small fuck up could have ruined the entire movie up until that point. Instead of distracting from the action, the camera puts you right in the middle of it, and because of that, you form relationships with the soldiers involved. One Shot is a very fun action flick and aside from the cast and the cover art, a typical movie-goer might not even know it was a direct to video flick. I have no problem recommending this to action movie fans.
