One Way (USA, 2022)

Is it good? Not really. Is it terrible? Naw, definitely not. Does it entertain? Yeah, well enough. Should you see it? Well, we have watched worse... like, for example, the totally different One Way from 2006 (trailer).

One Way offers an absorbing enough ride to be more entertaining than many a film, not to mention a real bus ride, but the narrative is too reliant on contrivances that require a substantial ability to ignore a concept known as "realistic". Thus, though the tale holds together well enough, one gets the feeling that the movie could be based on a previously unproduced, vintage TV-movie script — i.e., from the day and age when there was only the Big Three — that got pulled down off the shelf, dusted and updated, and then filmed as a second-feature cinema release (as if the filmmakers maybe forgot that double features no longer exist). Did this thing even hit the cinemas? (But then, who goes to cinemas anymore?)

Trailer to

One Way:

One Way opens with Freddy (Colson "Machine Gun Kelly" Baker of Viral [2016 / trailer], Bird Box [2018 / trailer] and Captive State [2019 / trailer]) fleeing at top speed down streets and alleyways as sirens wail in the background — the sirens might add to the "tension", but they are a ruse: in truth, Freddy just stole a bag of money and coke from a dealer, Vic (Drea de Matteo of Don't Sleep [2017 / trailer] and the already forgotten Assault on Precinct 13 remake [2005 / trailer]), and the cops have definitely not been called. 

 

He manages to make it aboard an oddly empty bus where, slowly bleeding to death from a bullet wound, he makes one desperate plan after another to solve his predicament, only to see them all fail. Additional narrative intrigue is added by his growing involvement with the young Rachel (Storm Reid, 19 years old playing 14, of The Nun II [2023 / trailer] and The Suicide Squad [2021 / trailer]), an underage runaway on her way meet her adult, cherry-picker, online "boyfriend" Smokie.

 

Okay, if you've watched the trailer, you can see that Kevin Bacon (of They/Them [2022 / trailer], Hollow Man [2000 / trailer], Wild Things [1998 / trailer], Tremors [1990], the Friday the 13th [1980 / trailer] without Jason, and so much more) figures in big as daddy Fred Sullivan Sr... but think again. His name is big, but his part is small, and he has in total about 10 minutes screen time. Not that he doesn't take advantage of those minutes: he plays an asshole, and an asshole he is, managing to imbue his Father-from-Hell with enough realistic trailer-park assholeism and scuzziness that he literally invigorates the screen by doing little more than to exude. One wonders why Freddy Jr, as desperate as he is, would ever bother calling him, a man he has listed in his cell phone as "Asshole", for leopards never change their spots. (But then again, desperate is desperate.)

It quickly becomes obvious that Freddy's bus ride is probably one way in more ways than one, and as such, it proves to be his time in purgatory — his period in which to realize mistakes, fix past ones and prevent future one — and achieve some sort of redemption. A concept all the more supported by the noirish cum nightmarish lighting of the bus and Freddy's worsening hallucinatory perception induced and augmented by his continual loss of blood; his hallucinations also include a suavely greasy mirror id that pops up now and then to either belittle or advise him. By the end of movie, however, Freddy's purgatorial journey on the bus offers him more than one chance of redemption, and his takes them all.

Much of the narrative relies on contrivances of the kind that pretty much only exist in movies. But seeing that much of what happens in most movies seldom or never happens in real life, who's to complain? (We will.)

 

Despite the entirely realistic concept of a young runaway naively going to meet her molester-to-be, for example, most of the Rachel/Freddy/Smokie storyline doesn't really ring true, especially in regard to how Rachel and Freddy end up ever-so-slowly bonding and definitely so as of the point that the supposed social services worker Will (Travis Fimmel of Needle [2010 / trailer], Warcraft [2016 / trailer], and Dreamland [2019 / trailer]) enters the picture.

Likewise, the relational triad between Freddy, his dad and the hard-as-nails crime boss Vic screams "narratively convenient" and "film trope" louder than it does in any way whisper "believable". As does, actually, the bit concerning Freddy's ex-wife and single-mom Christine (Meagan Holder of The Sand [2015 / trailer] and Dark Power [2013 / trailer]), which screams "TV movie" in that she is, in the end, so willing to put everything on the line for a man who hasn't really ever done jack-shit for her or their child. (Also, we couldn't help but wonder why the ever-so-ruthless Vic, who surely knew about Christine and daughter Lily [Casie Baker], never went after them as hostages to pressure Freddy to come back with the drugs and money, instead of just going after his cohort buddies Mac [Olaniyan Thurmon] and JJ [Luis Da Silva Jr].)

Whatever. In the end, One Way is one of those films which have way too many flaws to warrant being even half as good of a viewing experience as it is. Don't think too much — which isn't hard to do, as we all know, especially if you're a Republican — and you'll find it an engrossing, suspenseful ride, not to mention a well-shot one. In that sense, One Way is hardly a waste of time and an easy evening's viewing.