One Way Review: Good Instincts & Ideas Overcome Thriller’s Weak Script

When he isn’t strutting down a red carpet with his supremely talented partner, Megan Fox, or swapping his rapper persona for a rocker one, Machine Gun Kelly, aka Colson Baker, is a movie star in the making. One Way is one of those low-budget films that is done a disservice by a shoddy trailer and a straight-to-VOD release, buried under the buzz of the fall film festival season and following a sad week at the summer box office. In actuality, One Way is a fairly decent watch that is probably best in the comfort of one’s home. It is a film that has more good ideas than good execution. However, it accomplishes one thing: It gives the audience a better look at the innate talent that resides in the ever-evolving Baker.

In One Way, Colson Baker plays Freddy, a lifelong criminal who finds himself in a bad spot. He has stolen from the biggest mob boss in town and is bleeding out from a gunshot wound. His last one-way ticket to freedom has him boarding a bus where he meets a young runaway (Storm Reid) and a mysterious passenger (Travis Fimmel), who both serve as essential figures on what might be his last night on earth. Freddy’s journey is bleak, but maybe he can pull through.

Director Andrew Baird’s camera work is dizzying, intentionally cranking up the uneasiness and stress that threatens to overtake Freddy if the bullet wound doesn’t take him out first. Baird intends to provide the same pulsating chaotic energy that the Safdie Brothers provided with Uncut Gems and Good Time. The execution has an amateurish feel, but all the right instincts are there, and Baird acts on them. There is just a need for restraint and lesser reliance on close-ups.

One Way is a conventional film, and as it carries on, each archetype becomes easy to identify, and the course of the story is quickly uncovered. Ben Conway’s script is perhaps what undermines an otherwise fine crime thriller. The writing that Baird is working with is hollow. It lacks dimensions or follow-through for the better ideas in the story. For instance, there is no need to have the film set anywhere other than the bus. A single-location thriller with a desperate young man whose life depends on whether he can escape his ruthless boss — who is never seen and only heard over the phone — would suffice. The added emotional and moral dilemma Freddy faces with his fellow passengers also needed to be fleshed out, which would have led to an introspective character journey and not a typical crime thriller.

The film is at its best when it becomes a story about Freddy’s moral dilemma, most notably shown through his interactions with Storm Reid’s underaged runaway, who is being groomed, and Travis Fimmel’s social worker. Freddy is dying, losing blood quickly (a detail that is conveniently unnoticed by the bus driver). As he sits and awaits salvation or death, he needs to reflect. The work done on the bus is perhaps the best from the script, and Conway could have pushed further to get even deeper. Raising the stakes by unfurling the layers that make up Freddy is pertinent to the overall narrative. Cutaways to his angered boss or the people he speaks to on the phone are distractions. While building the danger by chasing him is essential, the story could have been effectively told with these figures remaining as disembodied voices, a tactic best used in Steven Knight’s Locke.

One Way has good ideas, an ambitious director and a committed actor behind it. Baker is undoubtedly going places beyond straight-to-VOD releases, as his charisma and determination will pave the way for superstardom. Hopefully, his film choices will improve. One Way won’t carve a place into the crime thriller pantheon, but its most notable achievement should be setting the stage for Andrew Baird and Colson Baker’s inevitable rises in the film industry.

One Way opened in theaters, digital, and on-demand on Friday, September 2. The film is 96 minutes long and rated R for pervasive language, violence, and drug use.