One Shot (2021)

An elite squad of Navy SEALs descends on a black-site island prison to extract a prisoner, only to find the insurgents want him back, and the whole affair unspools in a simulated single take. James Nunn directs this as a lean, muscular exercise in sustained tension, and the technique is genuinely well handled, even if the seams show more often than the filmmakers would like. The dialogue is functional at best and creaks under pressure. What holds the attention is the choreography, the tight corridors, the sense that the camera is running out of breath alongside the cast.

On the matter of social consciousness, the film is largely a null set. The squad is assembled with a matter-of-fact diversity that would have been unremarkable in a 1990s war picture and remains unremarkable here: Black and Middle Eastern performers fill out the ranks, and Ashley Greene's Zoe Anderson handles herself capably in a macho framework that never pauses to congratulate itself for her presence. The war-on-terror premise supplies Middle Eastern insurgents and a captive named Amin Mansur, lending the proceedings a geopolitical texture that is simply genre furniture. There is no romantic subplot, no coming-out, no sermon about the climate, no critique of the military-industrial complex, no arc about body image or neurodivergence. The film is interested in ammunition counts and sightlines.

What remains is a brisk, competent B-picture that understands its assignment and executes it without editorializing. It does not lecture, and for that we can be grateful. Whether one take or a thousand, the result is the same: a taut little thriller that will please devotees of the star and mildly irritate everyone else. The sequel was reportedly already in motion. The camera, one assumes, will keep running.