2 out of 5

Directed by: James Nunn

There were two things I noted about One More Shot from the outset – one that seemed novel, and one that seemed problematic. The problematic bit: that it’s edited to appear as a single shot. I’m not griping about this being “simulated” – stitched together from multiple shots – as that still takes a lot of skill and planning, but rather that, like found footage, this approach places demands on a movie that are very hard to meet, and the first few dragged out minutes of the flick began to manifest the potential failure of that demand: that you’re favoring the trick over scene substance, leading to a nagging feeling like a moment could’ve been better if we didn’t need to hang back with a running point of view. The novel bit was the en media res approach to the plot, which at least vibes with the single-shot approach, and posits a back story where suspected terrorist Amin Mansur (Waleed Elgadi) has been rescued by SEAL Jake Harris (Scott Adkins) in a somewhat botched mission, in order to bring Amin to an emptied-out airport – our setting – for a “where is the bomb” interrogation. While this isn’t the deepest of back stories by any means, I dug that writer / director James Nunn dropped some major events off camera, giving what we’re witnessing some immediate urgency.

…And then I found out that One More Shot is a sequel to the logically named One Shot, during which that back story would’ve been filled in (and the single shot precedent was set). That’s on me for not knowing that, and it doesn’t necessarily change that instilled urgency, but I found it amusing that one thing I was thinking of praising wasn’t exactly what I thought.

But back to the hook, because the movie has to kind of live and die around that. It’s not bad at it; not at all. Nunn does a sincerely admirable job of handing off our focus around characters and letting people duck into and out of frame so exposition and action can be delivered in due amounts. Still, the forced nature of it is very unavoidable, and while, thankfully, our main three principles all do quite excellently at selling their characters in a framework that isn’t necessarily made for that – you are having to deliver your bit on the run, and although I’m sure space was worked in to break up lines, I’d still say there’s less margin for error than usual – One More Shot is nonetheless padded to make this work, distilling the plot down to a kind of generalism that makes it even more senseless than your usual action mindlessness.

Plus, there are the people who unfortunately don’t make this work, and that includes those who essentially act as antagonists, either directly or because they get in Harris’ way with bureaucracy – namely Tom Berenger and Alexis Knapp, with Tom out of breath and seeming like he’s getting lines read to him in an ear piece, and Knapp either not suited to her role, or not guided very well by Nunn, or both. For the record: Adkins, Elgadi, and Meena Rayann, playing Elgadi’s on-screen wife, are those whom I’m praising above, doing a lot of the emotional heavy lifting and, in Adkins’ case, really making us feel the tiredness of being a one-man army shtick, which is put into play shepherding Elgadi and Rayann around the airport, as unfriendlies flood in to try to capture Mansur for their own nefarious needs.

Nunn makes good work of different corridors and spaces in the airport, and lets his crew come up with fair fight choreography to fit those spaces. However, that “reality” puts us in hallways and warehouses without much spectacle, turning fights into pretty similar scuffles. These are still entertaining, of course, with Adkins’ and friends making magic, buuuut the dreaded camera – and maybe some budget limitations – strike again, or not, rather, as a lot of hits end up lacking impact. Sometimes this is due to non-stunt folks being in the scenes and not selling it; sometimes it’s due to the angle Nunn picks being not great for selling it; and sometimes… I dunno, I just feel like they got through a long take, whiffed a shot at the end, or were like, oh well, good enough.

Some of the video gameyness of the movie – where you can sneak up and strangle someone all stealth as long as the other baddies are looking the other direction – could’ve been a lot of fun in a movie trying to be a little more fun, but One More Shot arrives with gravitas it’s never able to fully commit to, often due to the limitations of its single shot concept.