One Shot has Adkins as a Navy SEAL who, with his team, is escorting Ashley Greene to a secret military base where a suspected terrorist is being kept. The thing is, he knows about an attack that could kill thousands, so Greene wants to bring him back to the US and get him to talk. The problem is, he's already being tortured by Ryan Phillippe, who runs the base, and that has his fellow terrorists scared that he may already be talking. So said terrorists load up a clown car with hundreds of men, and lay siege to the base. Now it's up to Adkins and his men, against all odds, to fight through all these guys, get the terrorist to the chopper, and get him to the US. Will they succeed? Also, this film is done in all one continuous scene, made to look like one continuous shot, like an extended action version of the Spice Girls video for "Wannabe."
This isn't horrible, but I think it's hamstrung by the one shot device. In a short I think it could work really well, but for 96 minutes, we need cuts to other things happening. We also need cuts to individuals. Ryan Phillippe says something bad, I need a cut to Adkins's face to see him roll his eyes or something. I think it was clever the way they tried to mitigate that though through the one shot device, I guess I just don't know why I need the mitigation, right? Was there a contest to see who could do the best one shot action film? This is like the guy who wrote a novel without using the letter E. Maybe director James Nunn just wanted to see if he could do it, and he did, so in that sense it's successful. One of the other issues people had was the clown car aspect of a military truck showing up with some terrorists, and somehow that truck turns into hundreds of men. That's the kind of thing that's forgivable if you have some crazy PM Spiro Razatos action-directed 90-minute action fest, but here, where a lot of the action is just shooting at each other and we're hamstrung by the one shot device, I can see why people called that out--plus the one shot device in and of itself is saying the film wants to be taken more seriously, and as such something like a clown car effect will be given more of a side eye. Overall, I think this is a solid, fun actioner, kind of squarely in the middle of what you'd want from an Adkins flick.
As of this writing I still haven't seen John Wick: Chapter 4--almost 3 hours in the theater with no intermission means I probably won't see it until it comes out on streaming--but I am excited to see what Adkins does in that film. Here he's just the solid presence we've grown to know and love, and that really carries this thing more than the one shot device. I kind of pulled a fast one last fall when I reviewed Close Range during my Hall of Fame posts, only to be using it to induct Isaac Florentine, but now that we're at 25 films and counting for Adkins, I think his induction this fall is almost a fait accompli--I mean, do we want to force The Asylum Automatic Induction Rule at 30 posts for him? It's bad enough that we'll be doing it for Danny Trejo. One interesting thing is his output has slowed a bit. That may be due in part to the pandemic, but it makes it easier for us to keep up. For example, this is only one of two films he had come out in 2021, the other being Castle Falls. In 2020 he had 4, and in 2019 he had 5. And if he's going to be doing more big screen stuff like John Wick, it'll be even easier to catch up. By my count, I see about 11 films of his we could review on the site, which would put him near the 40 Club if we did them all. Again, probably a sign that we need to get him into the Hall of Fame sooner rather than later.
Director James Nunn has worked with Adkins before, on Eliminators and Green Street 3, of which I've seen the former, and I liked that film better than this. Yes, that one had the classic Adkins story trope, child kidnapped and he has to fight to get her back, but the action, especially between him and Stu Bennett, was great. And maybe that hurt this film more than the one shot device, the lack of a great baddie, because the one we had was sufficiently villainous bad, but he wasn't Stu Bennett charismatic bad, if you know what I mean; and to be honest, Adkins, though his presence carried the film, his character wasn't anything spectacular either, more just a one-note special forces soldier who's only better than your Chad Michael Murray or Jesse Metcalfe in a Willis Emmett-Furla-Oasis flick by virtue of it being Adkins. But maybe this is where I'm being hard on this movie and Nunn, because this isn't an EFO Willis actioner, it is more inspired than that, and being inspired is something we've seen less of over the last 15 years or so of DTV action. For that I think we can applaud Nunn, he's trying to give us something unique, and in that respect I think it worked.
We're now at 4 Ryan Phillippe films here on the site, which I hadn't realized we had that many, but as I looked at them, I remembered reviewing each one, I just needed to click on his tag for a reminder of them. Unlike Jesse Metcalfe or Chad Michael Murray that I mentioned above, Phillippe has made the transition from teen heartthrob to action guy much better, and he works well in the role he has here, dick federal guy giving Greene a hard time, but who can also get shit done. In looking at his IMDb bio, I see that he has some other stuff we can review, but not a lot. It doesn't look like he's leaning into these kinds of roles as much, and is doing things that are slightly bigger and more nuanced. That probably means we won't see him much more on here, but also with those few that this won't be the last time we see him. It'll be interesting to see if they work as well as he did here.
Finally, the clown car effect in this film brings up an interesting question: what can a DTV action film get away with as far as verisimilitude? I think really it all depends on how great the action is, how great the hero is, and how many iconic moments we have. Also, how serious are they trying to play it. The obvious one is the one guy beating up a bar full of baddies. We assume one guy, no matter how skilled, wouldn't be able to do that, but if the action is choreographed in a way that's exciting, we'll go with it. Another big one is the baddie who has endless resources, including an endless supply of goons, which is what we see here with the clown car effect. Sometimes it's ninjas, which work great because you can recycle stunt people for them and no one will know. In the 90s we always loved the beefy guy in a black suit who was just waiting for our hero to knock him out, or even better, spray him with uzi fire so he can shimmy to his death. The thing is, if you're putting out a schlock low-budget actioner, all of these things are seen as charming more than things we'd ding the film on when we're discussing it. When you put out a film that's all one shot though, you're looking to give the film a level of credibility that say a PM actioner or a Corman-produced Philippines romp wouldn't have, and as such, the clown car effect we get here is less charming and more something we'd give an eye roll to. When you want the film to be taken seriously on that level, it's more important to get those other parts right.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Hulu, so if you have that subscription you're good to go. I think this is worth checking out, especially if you're an Adkins fan. It's not his best of his recent ones, but it does the trick.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14199590
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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