One Shot (2021)

 

            I am working my way through war movies from 2021 and 2022 to prepare my Buffy Awards from those two years.  I’m getting to the bottom of the barrel, which means movies with crappy Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB scores.  I am not in any hurry to see those.  I thought “One Shot” was an unlikely Buffy winner, but it is easily available on Hulu.  It is a British action pic directed by James Nunn.

            Four Navy SEALs are tasked with transferring a terrorist detainee from a black site prison to Washington, D.C.  The CIA analyst named Zoe (Ashley Khoury) is closed-mouthed about the reason for this.  There is some grumbling from the boys, but leader Jake Harris (Scott Adkins) reminds them that they will follow orders, no matter what.  When they arrive, the warden (Ryan Phillippe) is reluctant to give up his prisoner.  While he is waiting for confirmation, Zoe is taken to the prisoner.  Mansur (Waleed Elgadi) is being tortured.  Zoe is the type of bleeding heart who insists you get more from positive reinforcement than from pain reinforcement.  Mansur insists he is just a small fish.   However, the CIA thinks he knows about a nuclear dirty bomb that is somewhere in Washington, D.C.  A truck arrives at the prison and a large group of terrorists and mercenaries break into the facility.  They are led by a jihadist who is determined to make sure Mansur doesn’t talk.  About ten minutes into the movie, the killing begins and it doesn’t let up until the end of the movie

            I did not do any reading on the movie before watching it.  Early in the bloodletting, I noted that the movie was in the midst of a long take.  I love those, so I was waiting for the next cut and marveling at how long it was taking to get a break in the cinematography.  It kept going and going. I also made a head-shaking observation that the title of the movie must be a joke because the action was the opposite of one shot.  The amount of ammo expended is prodigious.  It was only after viewing that I read that the entire movie is one shot.  Get it?  My theory is the director was impressed with the long take in “Extraction” and asked himself “what if an entire action movie was shot in one take?”  For a brainless shoot-em-up, the movie is amazing to watch.  You will marvel at the choreography that allowed for one continuous shot.  The cameraman’s movements are much more impressive than the movements of the goons.  They tend to run out into the open to get killed (like every movie like this).  You will also marvel at the incredible body count.  And the incredible amount of bullets that Harris’ pistol holds.  Reloading is not a priority for director Nunn.  Speaking of incredible, that truck sure held a lot of bad guys.  It was like a kicked ant hill.  But why quibble about a movie that is not attempting to win an Academy Award?

            Do they give an award to the movie that most resembles a first-person shooter game?  If so, we have a winner.  The second half of the movie mostly tracks Harris as he first tries to establish communications with the outside world and second, tries to catch Mansur before the enemy can kill him.  After all, his job is to transfer the prisoner.  As Harris navigates to the comm room, he viciously knifes five guys in a row.  As he chases Mansur, he maneuvers in the prison grounds with his trusty pistol.  The grounds are home to a large number of obstacles to hide behind.  Sound familiar, gamers?  Unfortunately, there is no BFG lying around.  But he really doesn’t need one.  Harris’ odyssey includes two kickass fights.  The last is with the head baddie, of course.

            The acting is not as bad as you would imagine.  The poor schlub of a jihadist (Mansur) is portrayed sympathetically by Elgadi.  And Adkins makes for a good generic action star.  He doesn’t have much to say, other than constantly reminding his comrades that “theirs is not to wonder why”.  The dialogue does not set this above its ilk, but at least it is not laughable.

            I am not a big fan of combat porn, unless it’s a Korean war movie.  I did enjoy “One Shot” even though one web site claims Harris kills over 50 people.  I have played some FPS, so seeing it enacted by actors instead of CGP (computer generated people) was interesting.  And I already mentioned I’m a sucker for long takes.  And mass killing of terrorists and their mercenary buddies.  So grab the popcorn, but don’t take a drink every time Harris knifes someone.  You won’t be conscious by the end of the movie.

GRADE  =  B-

 

War Sailor (2022)

 

            “War Sailor” (Krigsseileren) is a new Netflix limited series.  It is an expansion of a WWII film.  The movie and series were written and directed by Gunnar Vikene.  He based the screenplay on true stories of Norwegian merchant mariners in the war.  The characters are fictional, however.  The movie had  the largest budget ever for a Norwegian film.  It cost $11 million.  It was Norway’s entry for the Best International Feature for an Academy Award, but it did not make the cut.

            After a scene marking the reunion of the two main characters in Singapore in 1948, the movie flashes back to 1939 Norway.  The country has not been invaded by the Germans yet.  Sigborn (Pal Sverre Hagen) and Freddie (Kristoffer Joner) are best friends.  Sigborn lives with Freddie’s family.  He has a wife Cecilia (Ine Marie Wilmann) and three kids.  Times are tough, so Sigborn convinces Freddie to go aboard a merchant ship for an 18 month job.  When Norway is invaded, all its merchant ships are transferred to the Allies.  These “drafted” men become known as “war sailors”.  Freddie won’t be coming home until the war is over.  The movie follows the two friends through several brushes with death.  That makes them typical of war sailors, many of whom died when their ships were sunk.  The movie keeps a running total of Norwegian ships that were lost.  The number reaches 680!

            The movie has dual tracks as about 1/4 of it follows Freddie’s family as it deals with making a living and dealing with German occupation and British bombing attacks on the u-boat base located at their city.  Meanwhile, Freddie finds a new family in the core group that he and Sigborn sail with.  The group includes a woman and an underage boy.  They have a series of trials that include trying to rescue shipwrecked sailors, surviving a u-boat torpedo, and being castaways.  The castaway sequence is marked by benevolence by the u-boat captain.  There are no Nazi villains in the film.    

            “War Sailor” is another of Netflix’s Norway productions.  The last one was “Narvik: Hitler's First Defeat”.  This is better.  The cast is strong with Kristoffer Joner giving a standout performance.  His Freddie goes through a lot, as does Sigborn.  But Sigborn has no family to worry about.  There are some harrowing scenes which come without any warning.  Director Vikene pulls off a bravura intercutting sequence which pairs a u-boat sinking with the bombing of the kids’ school.  Great cinematography adds to the intriguing narrative.  I need to add that although I am not a big fan of dubbing instead of subtitles, this movie’s English dubbing is outstanding

            Normally, I believe more is better when it comes to war movies, so I have no problem with the movie being lengthened to a mini-series.  Sometimes this improves the film, like with “Das Boot”.  Other times it dilutes the quality of the film, like with “Apocalypse Now Redux”.  “War Sailor” is in that second category.  I have not seen the movie, so I can only imagine what was added.  It appears to be the section that covers after the war.  When I finished the first two episodes, I was thinking the movie was a clear A, but I had to reduce the series a letter grade because of the weak third hour.  This episode covers Freddie’s return home and includes a huge time jump to 1972.  I felt like air was leaking out of the balloon during this episode.

            I still recommend the series.  It certainly is a fitting tribute to all the Norwegian sailors who gave their lives in a war they were not trained for and did not volunteer for.  If they were at sea when Germany invaded, they had no choice but to continue sailing the Atlantic when u-boats made their ships very vulnerable.  Imagine being forced to make the Murmansk run, which Freddie and friends are.  (If you are familiar with the Battle of the Atlantic, a convoy to Murmansk, Russia had the highest pucker factor of any convoy duty.)  Or you could desert and save your life, but be considered a traitor back home.  That’s quite a dilemma.  And then throw in the families of men who were gone for years.  Families that lost their breadwinner and were in some amount of danger themselves from bombings.  We tend to forget that the “war sailors” had “war families”.

GRADE  =  B   

 

 

                 

 

Battle at Bloody Beach (1961)

 

                I’ve looking over my list of movies I have watched and not reviewed.  There are quite a few, so it’s time to knock some reviews off.  The B-movies will be short reviews, because that is all they deserve.  I’m starting with one that stars Audie Murphy.  For Baby Boomer men, he is a part of our childhood.  Murphy finished WWII as the most decorated American soldier.  He went to Hollywood and with the help of Jimmy Cagney, he became an actor.  He made a lot of westerns and eventually starred as himself in “To Hell and Back”.  It was a huge hit, but he remained a second tier actor.  “Battle at Bloody Beach” was a typical low budget affair for him.  It’s doubtful he enjoyed making it. 

 

                Murphy plays Craig Benson.  Benson is a civilian who is tasked with hooking up with Filipino guerrillas in the occupied Philippines.  He has weapons for them.  He has an ulterior motive and that is to find his wife Ruth (Dolores Mitchell).  They were separated when the Japanese invaded.  The guerrilla band he meets is led by a shady American named M’Keever (William Mims).  His unit is more thieves than warriors.  M’Keever wants those weapons.  And so does a rival band of legit guerrillas led by Julio (Alejandro Rey).  Guess who is with him.  Ruth is now a guerrilla.  Before you get done shaking your head over the swelling harp music, Ruth proclaims that she is “not the same girl you married.”  She side-eyes Julio.  Awkward!  Perhaps battle with the Japanese will solve this love triangle by killing one third of it.  You know that battle is coming since it’s the title of the movie.

 

                “Battle at Bloody Beach” must have played in drive-in theaters.  It is typical of that kind of war movie.  It is a clinic on bad acting.  Not Audie, of course.  The rest of the cast is low rent, but we do get Ivan Dixon (of “Hogan’s Heroes” fame) in a minor role.  Dolores Michaels looks worthy of a row.  Her relationship with Craig is odd as she is not shamed by her adultery with a hunky Filipino and she and Craig drip hatred.  Their relationship is predictable unless you think Audie Murphy is going to end the film as a pathetic cuckold.

 

                We are promised a battle and we get a hip-shooting finale. Japanese are slaughtered as they attack the Alamo (a beached ship).  The mortar bombardment is decent as even low budget films can do bombardment better than bullets.  There’s no blood, no holes, no wounded.  This is 1961, after all. 

 

                With all that said, the movie is not terrible.  It is not campy.  The dialogue doesn’t elicit many groans and the action is crowd pleasing.  Of course, if you did see it at a drive-in, you may not have been watching when the movie got to the bullet-slinging.  You had better things to do, right?  And only 1 hour and 25 minutes to do them.  But there was probably another feature coming up.

 

GRADE  =  C