A faint whiff of spoof hangs over this all guns blazing action thriller set in an airport where a military jet has landed with a terrorist on board. Inside the terminal, spooks in black suits woodenly bark homeland security jargon at each other: “Prepare for the evacuation of the asset!” The movie already feels faintly ridiculous, then in stomps martial arts actor Scott Adkins (looking like Ben Affleck’s stunt double, but with more jaw and eight-pack abs). He plays Jake Harris, a super-tough Navy Seal escorting the terrorist. And the thing about Harris is he’s unkillable; fling him over a balcony or karate chop him in the neck, and up he pops again, knife in hand, ready to stab another bad guy in the throat.
The film is a sequel to 2021’s One Shot, which saw insurgents attack a CIA black site to free a British terrorist suspected of planning a dirty bomb plot. Waleed Elgadi returns as terrorist Amin Mansur, and this time around the CIA has intel that the bomb has been shipped to the US and will detonate in a matter of hours. So they’ve flown in Mansur to reveal the location – and his pregnant wife too, as leverage. But before the CIA can get their hands on Mansur, a private army of mercenaries storm the airport.
Like the original, One More Shot has been filmed to look like a single continuous take. The gimmick adds some real-time intensity to the fighting as Harris single-handedly takes on a coach-load of mercenaries, leaving 50 or 60 men the size of Dwayne Johnson crumpled across the carcass-strewn airport. More than a little suspension of disbelief is required and, increasingly, I felt as if I was watching a video game. It’s a movie with a fairly low IQ too – violent, boring and a bit soulless, always on the edge of running out of steam from the 45 minute mark.
• One More Shot is released on 12 January on Sky Cinema in the UK and digital platforms in Australia.
