This movie starts out with Michael Clarke Duncan playing a black, militarized version of Harvey the Invisible Rabbit. It goes on to introduce us to a main character that is a cheating, arrogant weakling. A perfectly fine young woman is brutally raped with her clothes on and THEN we see her naked in the shower. Three cops show up who appear to have learned everything they know about police work from the Erik Estrada Correspondence School of Law Enforcement. Eric Roberts pops by as a lobotomized version of Perry Mason. Oh, and this film also features one of the rare non-porn appearances of a strap-on dildo. If that all sounds like something you'd like to watch, put down the meth and go eat an orange.
The plot of One Way is rather involved but I'm not going to get into it in too much detail. That's because this story is like running on a treadmill while falling down the side of a mountain. It feels like you're stuck in the same spot and careening wildly out of control at the same time. Anyway, here's the basics of it. Eddie Schneider (Til Schweiger) wants to marry Judy Birk (Stefanie von Pfetten), his boss's daughter. His professed love for Judy, however, doesn't stop Eddie from banging as many other women as his unit can handle. Eddie is an extremely talented and extremely self-destructive a-hole. He's the sort of guy who makes himself late for the most important business meeting of his life because Eddie just has to get a morning quickie from an anonymous red head, then incorporates his being late into the pitch that lands the company a big client.
Judy's brother Anthony (Sebastien Roberts) finds out that Eddie is a cheating bastard. He doesn't tell Judy or their parents. He doesn't confront Eddie. No, Anthony decides that it gives him an excuse to rape Eddie's friend and assistant, Angelina Sable (Lauren Lee Smith). Only after that does Anthony blackmail Eddie with evidence of his cheating. Eddie lies in court about Angelina to get Eddie acquitted. But in a case of leaden irony, Judy finds out about Eddie's infidelity on her own and breaks up with him, which leads to her father firing Eddie.
Ugh. I've already gone into more detail than this thing merits. To wrap things up - Angelina starts hallucinating; Anthony winds up dead; Eddie is put on trial; the story bounces back and forth from being about vigilantism to personal redemption to familial dysfunction; and Judy reveals herself to be one of those women with colossally bad taste in men.
The acting in One Way is okay. Lauren Lee Smith is fairly good as Angelina until the character gets saddled with a mental condition and Stefanie von Pfetten is appealing as one of the wimpiest empowered women you'll ever see. Til Schweiger is well, he's Til Schweiger. If you like the stuff Til Schweiger does, you'll find Til Schweiger doing it here. The rest of the cast is asked to do too many ridiculous scenes and speak too much bad dialog to fairly evaluate their performances.
The direction is also okay, but it's a little disturbing that the best staged and most affective scene is the rape of Angelina and the worst staged, least affective scene is the revenge rape of Anthony. I mean, writer/director Reto Salimbeni can only make the rape of Anthony work by equating being handcuffed with being paralyzed from the waist down, which creepily makes it seem as though he put much less thought into it than he did with the more realistic violation of Angelina.
One Way certainly has narrative ambitions. It's trying to take on subjects of morality, ethics and responsibility. Unfortunately, those concepts aren't addressed with much talent or skill. It's a little like listening to a 6 year old try and tell you what War and Peace is all about.
There are moments in One Way that make you think that this film might have turned out better in an alternate dimension where radical changes were made to the script. We can only watch the movie that was made in this dimension, though, and that's not something anyone really needs to do.
The plot of One Way is rather involved but I'm not going to get into it in too much detail. That's because this story is like running on a treadmill while falling down the side of a mountain. It feels like you're stuck in the same spot and careening wildly out of control at the same time. Anyway, here's the basics of it. Eddie Schneider (Til Schweiger) wants to marry Judy Birk (Stefanie von Pfetten), his boss's daughter. His professed love for Judy, however, doesn't stop Eddie from banging as many other women as his unit can handle. Eddie is an extremely talented and extremely self-destructive a-hole. He's the sort of guy who makes himself late for the most important business meeting of his life because Eddie just has to get a morning quickie from an anonymous red head, then incorporates his being late into the pitch that lands the company a big client.
Judy's brother Anthony (Sebastien Roberts) finds out that Eddie is a cheating bastard. He doesn't tell Judy or their parents. He doesn't confront Eddie. No, Anthony decides that it gives him an excuse to rape Eddie's friend and assistant, Angelina Sable (Lauren Lee Smith). Only after that does Anthony blackmail Eddie with evidence of his cheating. Eddie lies in court about Angelina to get Eddie acquitted. But in a case of leaden irony, Judy finds out about Eddie's infidelity on her own and breaks up with him, which leads to her father firing Eddie.
Ugh. I've already gone into more detail than this thing merits. To wrap things up - Angelina starts hallucinating; Anthony winds up dead; Eddie is put on trial; the story bounces back and forth from being about vigilantism to personal redemption to familial dysfunction; and Judy reveals herself to be one of those women with colossally bad taste in men.
The acting in One Way is okay. Lauren Lee Smith is fairly good as Angelina until the character gets saddled with a mental condition and Stefanie von Pfetten is appealing as one of the wimpiest empowered women you'll ever see. Til Schweiger is well, he's Til Schweiger. If you like the stuff Til Schweiger does, you'll find Til Schweiger doing it here. The rest of the cast is asked to do too many ridiculous scenes and speak too much bad dialog to fairly evaluate their performances.
The direction is also okay, but it's a little disturbing that the best staged and most affective scene is the rape of Angelina and the worst staged, least affective scene is the revenge rape of Anthony. I mean, writer/director Reto Salimbeni can only make the rape of Anthony work by equating being handcuffed with being paralyzed from the waist down, which creepily makes it seem as though he put much less thought into it than he did with the more realistic violation of Angelina.
One Way certainly has narrative ambitions. It's trying to take on subjects of morality, ethics and responsibility. Unfortunately, those concepts aren't addressed with much talent or skill. It's a little like listening to a 6 year old try and tell you what War and Peace is all about.
There are moments in One Way that make you think that this film might have turned out better in an alternate dimension where radical changes were made to the script. We can only watch the movie that was made in this dimension, though, and that's not something anyone really needs to do.