One Way

Ngl, MGK, has earned my respect as an actor in this film. He literally held his own alongside icons Kevin Bacon and Travis Fimmel. For that matter, all casting and performances were convincing and excellent, especially Storm Reid and Luis Da Silva Jr., with only Drea de Matteo being too cliched and unconvincing as the gang leader.

Even the score for a low budget B film was on point. The cinematography however, had some issues, specifically being too dark in most of the bus scenes, and the garbled out of focus and shaky cam shots. Although a creative conceptual story with some decent twists, the writing suffered some plot and technical issues, and had too much filler for the little substance to effectively fill in the slowly paced 95 min runtime. The story had decent continuity, but also had some convoluted scenes and dialog. The ending was confusing; was it trying to be smart, or was it just convoluted. Even the constant conversations with Freddy's "conscience(?)" felt amateurish and out of place, and the cheesy directing and slow-mo and blurred shots got annoying pretty quick.

This film needed more dramatic and suspenseful content and/or a shorter runtime. All the filler added in just dragged out the film and should've been edited out, and perhaps add more needed character background and development. It's too bad this film has so many rookie-filmmaker mistakes, because with the awesome casting and performances and great conceptual story, it easily had the potential to be a great thriller. Still, a well deserved 6/10 from me for Baker's impressive performance next to two great actors.

I actually enjoyed the movie despite its many flaws.

Visually the film is very bleak with grey being the predominant colour of presentation. It's use does work in some parts but it does drive the films mood down too far over a sustained period.

The film's acting is pretty poor with two notable exceptions, Kevin Bacon and MGK. They are both exceptional. The film would have been significantly better if they had shared more screen time.

Where the film really struggles is its pacing. It spends most of our time in one location and so it does get boring, making a 90 minute movie feel much longer :)

To be honest, this somewhat exceeded my expectations. I thought this was going to be a total stinker, (it had the Bruce Willis vibe to the description and box cover). Knowing that Bacon was just going to be a side character for small scenes, perhaps my bar was set so low going into it that it actually didn't seem too bad. The all-around solid acting made up for many shortcomings on the technical side. Acting and actor restraint good if not great. Script pretty decent, but the technical side could have been better. By that I mean the runtime was a bit long per the total content and plot devices. In other words, it was a reeeeally long bus ride and a bit too much cell phone talking. "Action" on electronic devices (computers, tablets, phones, etc) is boring, but this didn't cross that line completely. Also, the camerawork seemed amateurish. Focal games, blurring, cascading, and finally the dreaded shaky/bouncing cam that rarely locks onto a still frame so you can focus on it. In summary, I think it was as good as it could have been for what was written, with the technical and editing work holding it back.

That's two mediocre Kevin Bacon movies in a row for me... he was great in both, the rest of the cast, not so much. The story, directing and editing was pretty b-level. I hope this isn't a dip/end to his career that has him doing "whatever" comes his way, just for money. Again, he looked great, the overall movie was just not good. I thought he was going to be a main player in the movie, he ends up on the short end. Not great for an actor that was as good as he was for as long. Hopefully he does a better job vetting the scripts that he decides to film going forward. I usually love what he does, I'd hate to see him go out on a sour note.

The good: they tried to make something exciting and thrilling, so I give them credits for trying, but in the end they utterly failed at making a thrilling crime story.

The bad: the story. The story is just not credible and kinda tedious, however much they have tried to make it look thrilling, the story is an empty shell.

How long can I stay interested in a character travelling on a bus? ONLY if the leading actor had been a terrific actor, this movie could have had some merit, but now it has none.

Kevin Bacon on the other hand IS a great actor and he does perform well (as usual) but he cant save this movie.

The story: a criminal has fled on a bus and now other criminals are chasing him. Lots of talk talk talk, little to none thrilling action.