“One Shot” Theatrical Poster
Director: James Nunn
Cast: Scott Adkins, Ashley Greene, Ryan Phillippe, Emmanuel Imani, Dino Kelly, Lee Charles, Jack Parr, Waleed Elgadi, Terence Maynard, Jess Liaudin, Dan Styles
Running Time: 96 min.
By Paul Bramhall
As a fan of the action genre there’s something deeply admirable about the amount of effort that goes into creating a one-shot action scene. From the hospital shootout in John Woo’s Hard Boiled, to Tony Jaa’s restaurant rampage in Tom Yum Goong, the combination of timing, choreography, stamina, and camerawork has to come together just right to make it work. Today the one-shot action scene is still just as popular, but increasingly post-production digital assistance is used to effectively stitch a collection of shots together, giving the illusion of it being a genuine continuous shot. That’s not necessarily a criticism, with Charlize Theron’s stairwell fight in Atomic Blonde and Chris Hemsworth’s escape in Extraction being stellar examples of digitally assisted one-shot sequences, however to apply the one-shot principle to an action movie from start to finish is a daunting proposition.
It’s been tried before, with Ilya Naishuller’s Hardcore Henry using digital stitching to create a first-person one-take adrenaline rush in 2015, and more recently Tak Sakaguchi framing his 77-minute genuine one-take battle sequence to create Crazy Samurai Musashi with middling results. It would be in 2021 though when the busiest man in the DTV action genre, Scott Adkins, decided to try his hand at starring in a one-shot action movie. The appropriately titled One Shot reunites Adkins with director James Nunn, who he worked with on the underseen Eliminators, and the lamentable Green Street 3: Never Back Down. Since they last collaborated Nunn has kept himself busy in the DTV action genre helming The Marine 5: Battleground and The Marine 6: Close Quarters, so to see him Continue reading
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