The Upcoming
  • Cinema & Tv
    • Movie reviews
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Show reviews
  • Music
    • Live music
  • Food & Drinks
    • News & Features
    • Restaurant & bar reviews
    • Interviews & Recipes
  • Theatre
  • Art
  • Travel & Lifestyle
  • Literature
  • Fashion & Beauty
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Competitions
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

CultureMovie reviewsSky

One Shot

One Shot | Movie review
27 January 2022
Umar Ali
Avatar
Umar Ali
27 January 2022

Movie and show review

Umar Ali

One Shot

★★★★★

Release date

29th January 2022

Certificate

UPG121518 title=

Platform

Sky

One Shot follows a group of Navy SEALs led by Lt Blake Harris (Scott Adkins) and CIA analyst Zoe Anderson (Ashley Greene), who are tasked with retrieving prisoner Amin Mansur (Waleed Elgadi) from a CIA black site island prison to try and prevent a terrorist attack on Washington. However, they are not the only ones looking for Waleed, and the SEALs must fight to both survive and extract Waleed when a group of insurgents attack the prison.

One Shot’s primary storytelling gimmick is, as the title says, the movie was filmed in one shot: the entire film is one continuous take, directly following the action as it happens. While this is an interesting trick, creating a powerful sense of tension and claustrophobia and facilitating some fairly engaging camerawork, it can only do so much to inject excitement into the story, which is unfortunately very barebones and dull. 

From a narrative standpoint, everything on-screen has been done before and done more interestingly – it’s essentially an hour and a half of Navy SEALs, all of whom are a day away from seeing their families, shooting at terrorists. None of the characters are particularly compelling, and the dialogue feels wooden at the best of times, which actively works against the hard work done by the rest of the film’s production. 

There’s some vague lip service paid to the idea of political messages, with some brief criticism of torture and war crimes, but these moments are too few and far between and feel very non-committal. The writing is at odds between wanting to present an uncomplicated image of gung-ho military heroes and acknowledging the unethical practices of the US military, but cannot commit to either stance, creating an intensely muddled picture that does nothing to help the problems at the heart of the film.

From a technical standpoint, One Shot is very impressive – its central gimmick does a lot to make its action scenes dynamic and exciting, and allows for some slick camera tricks and visually appealing shots. However, where it’s really let down is in its storytelling. Great cinematography can only do so much to salvage a thoroughly uninteresting narrative, making this one-shot film more of a one-trick pony.

★★★★★

Umar Ali

One Shot is released on Sky on 29th January 2022.

Watch the trailer for One Shot here:

Related ItemsactionAshley Greenejames nunnnavy sealsreviewRyan PhillippeScott Adkinsthriller

More in Movie reviews

The Road Dance

★★★★★
Matthew McMillan
Read More

Rhino

★★★★★
Catherine Sedgwick
Read More

The Innocents

★★★★★
Emma Kiely
Read More

Benediction

★★★★★
Lauren Devine
Read More

This Much I Know to Be True

★★★★★
Andrew Murray
Read More

The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin)

★★★★★
Andrew Murray
Read More

Vortex

★★★★★
Joseph Owen
Read More

Everything Everywhere All at Once

★★★★★
Guy Lambert
Read More

Father Stu

★★★★★
Matthew McMillan
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap

Movie and show review

Umar Ali

One Shot

★★★★★

Release date

29th January 2022

Certificate

UPG121518 title=

Platform

Sky

  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • Albert Adrià reopens Enigma on 7 June as a “fun-dining” restaurant and cocktail bar
    Food & Drinks
  • Crimes of the Future: Three new clips from David Cronenberg’s dystopian body horror film
    Cannes
  • The Road Dance
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • The Innocents
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Paolo Nutini at the 100 Club
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • The Father and the Assassin at the National Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • The Amazons launch How Will I Know If Heaven Will Find Me? at Live Nation
    Live music
  • Dirty Dancing the Movie in concert at Apollo Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Corsage
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • One Fine Morning (Un Beau Matin)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Dirty Dancing the Movie in concert at Apollo Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Feminine Power: The Divine to the Demonic at the British Museum
    ★★★★★
    Art
  • Eo (Hi-Han)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Warpaint at the Roundhouse
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Armageddon Time
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why
With the support from:
International driving license

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

James Bay at Lafayette | Live review
Krapp’s Last Tape at the Tower Theatre | Theatre review