Everything all at once

One Shot

Cast: Ashley Greene, Scott Adkins, Waleed Elgadi Director: James Nunn

Duration: 1 h 36 m Available: On demand “He is our one shot to fix this thing,” says Zoe Anderson (Ashley Greene), referring to a captured terrorist (Waleed Elgadi) being held at a U.S. black ops site in Poland, thus explaining in one line of dialogue why she needs to extract the man and take him back to Washington to reveal the location of a dirty bomb, while also referencing the title of director James Nunn’s latest shoot-em-up, which unfolds in a single, unbroken take, starting from the scene in which a helicopter deposits Anderson and her Navy SEAL escort team (headed by Scott Adkins

as Lieutenant Harris) at the base where Mansur is being held — and where, minutes after their arrival, a rival group of French terrorists bust in, also with the intention of springing Mansur for their own nefarious ends, which Harris is determined not to allow, despite the fact that the local base commander (Ryan Phillippe) is ready to give the man up to save himself — and unfortunately, the story is a little thin, consisting for large stretches of little more than a shooting gallery of bad guys, and the one-take technique, while mostly well executed (though a little too shaky hand-held for my tastes), doesn’t do enough to elevate the story, and left this critic considering that, while it may in fact be possible to take something that is normally edited and present it in a single, breathless rush, it’s not always the best idea to do so. ★★