One Ranger (2023) Review

“One Ranger” Teaser Poster

Director: Jesse V. Johnson
Cast: Thomas Jane, Dean Jagger, Dominique Tipper, Jess Liaudin, Rachel Wilde, Nick Moran, Patrick Bergin, John Malkovich, Alena Gerber, David Sakurai
Running Time: 95 min.

By Henry McKeand

Once upon a time, One Ranger, the latest from DTV titan Jesse V. Johnson, would have been a reliable box office draw based solely on the strength of its logline: A crusty Texas Ranger named (Thomas Jane) is called on by British Intelligence to travel to the U.K. and team up with an MI6 agent (Dominique Tipper) in order to bring down a former-IRA terrorist (Dean Jagger). That kind of outlandish, fish-out-of-water buddy cop premise was liquid gold back when Gene Hackman and Mel Gibson were viable leading men. Now, it reads as a charming-yet-quaint idea for a straight-to-streaming throwaway. Alas, the majority of us seem to have forgotten the simple allure of watching hard-nosed lawmen navigate culture shock while dodging bullets. 

Luckily, there’s a small but loyal minority who looked forward to One Ranger as a perfect way to spend 90 minutes. Most of these viewers (myself included) recognize Johnson as the trustworthy action workhouse that he is, and a sizable chunk (myself strongly included) regards Thomas Jane as one of the greatest and most underutilized Hollywood stars of the past 25 years. To see him team up with Johnson for a gin-u-wine modern western was absolute catnip for a very specific sliver of the Venn Diagram.

The good news is that the Punisher himself is in fine form as the titular ranger, sporting a Seth Bullock mustache and speaking like the bastard love child of modern-day Nick Nolte and Jeff Bridges in Hell or High Water. Jane has grown skinnier and more intense with age; his gaunt face has swallowed his squinting, piercing eyes, but he’s as commanding a screen presence as he was in the early-2000s. His acting is also as strong as ever; he gives a breezy sense of authenticity to his role even as he leans into the gravel-voiced Texas shtick so hard that it veers on cartoonish. 

When he first appears on screen, he’s walking through the Texas desert like he owns the place. A whole movie could have been made with the character in his natural habitat, but it isn’t long before a series of plot contrivances brings him into the orbit of Dominique Tipper’s by-the-book Agent Smith. After this, the script wastes no time putting the two of them on a plane to London, where they have to overcome their differences and stop a dirty bomb from being detonated on British soil all while getting chewed out by their supervisor (played by John Malkovich, who delivers his “stop being renegades” speeches at such a bizarrely rapid pace that it’s unclear if he’s making a creative decision or just excited to finish the takes so he can cash his check).

Jane and Tipper both had major roles in The Expanse, and their dynamic is the unexpected heart of the film. Despite the lone wolf implications of its title, One Ranger works best when the two of them are on screen together. Instead of manufacturing boring conflict, Johnson’s script allows them to settle into a relaxed rapport early on. The result is a warm, lived-in partnership that might have sustained a TV series in the 80s, and they have the half-platonic chemistry of the best cop show duos. 

But this is a 2023 release by a director known for delivering balls-to-the-walls Scott Adkins showcases, which means that the laidback buddy charm is at constant odds with the more violent action film that the poster promises. Considering Johnson’s track record with fight sequences, it’s a surprise that the combat is often the weakest part of the film. Overly choreographed showdowns with nameless goons in abandoned buildings have saturated the mid-tier action market for more than a decade, and One Ranger fails to inject these sequences with any originality. Instead, the most memorable fight scenes are blunt-edge brawls between Jane and a heavy played by One Shot’s Jess Liaudin, and even these scenes feel like tame retreads of Jane’s fight with Kevin Nash’s “The Russian” from The Punisher. 

This very modern approach to action, with constant bloodshed and a focus on capturing impressive stunts, never quite gels with the old school hangout vibe of the slower scenes. Scenes of the aging lawman suddenly being transported into The Raid are as awkward as they sound, and it doesn’t help that these impressive stunts are very clearly being done by a man who is not Thomas Jane. More time should have been spent tightening the bond between the two heroes and playing up the “stranger in a new land” detective work.

One Ranger’s greatest flaw is that it never seems like the kind of movie that would have made a splash on the big screen, even at the height of cop movie mania. At the end of the day, it’s too sloppy to match the clockwork brilliance of the genre classics it cribs from. However, the moments when Johnson slows down and lets Jane and Tipper do the heavy lifting are strong enough to be worth the price of admission (or, more realistically, the price of an Amazon Video rental). An Honest-to-God TV series with these characters is virtually impossible, but it’s not entirely ridiculous to imagine it getting at least one sequel (it worked for The Debt Collector!). If he has such luck, here’s to hoping that Johnson goes with the flow and makes the most of Jane and Tipper’s performances instead of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. 

Henry McKeand’s Rating: 5.5/10