ONE LAST SHOT is an event movie within the world of indie action: director James Nunn (GREEN STREET 3: NEVER BACK DOWN), writer Jamie Russell and star Scott Adkins have successfully completed an ambitious trilogy. Like ONE SHOT (2021) and ONE MORE SHOT (2024), this is a military action thriller shot ROPE-style (simulating one unbroken take). To do this kind of action on a VOD budget and schedule is an astonishing technical achievement, but honestly the stories are engrossing enough that I don’t think about that too much while watching them.

As I said about ONE MORE SHOT, I think this new one would make enough sense if you hadn’t seen the others, but I recommend watching them first because they do happen one after the other. That’s also a unique thing about this as a part 3: Adkins’ character Jake Harris begins the movie with two full movies worth of injuries and exhaustion. One of the people transporting him to the location of this movie says that he should be in the ER, not getting new orders. But you know how it is. He’s the only man for the job.

I didn’t remember this, and didn’t need to, but part 3 here is taking the baton handed to it in part 2. That one was about preventing a dirty bomb from going off during the state of the union, but it turns out that whole plot was just meant to provoke a response in which the heads of intelligence would all gather in one place, allowing the possibility to steal their biometric data and break into the missile defense system.

So this movie opens with that gathering. We follow NSA deputy secretary Elena Torres (Hannah Ware, OLDBOY 2013) through security, where she clocks that something is wrong because she recognizes Elliot Carter (Steven Cree, HEADS OF STATE), sort of a William Strannix type, a former Navy SEAL who feels abandoned by his country and is striking back. Just like in the last one, I questioned the wisdom of depicting this type of national security situation on such a low budget, but as soon as things go sour and heads start getting shot it’s so brutal I was on board.

Part 2 left off with Jake being sent to talk to someone named Admiral Mulholland. I probly hoped Mulholland would turn out to be some cool actor, and sure enough, it’s Dolph Lundgren! He doesn’t look like he can really do fight scenes anymore, but his presence as the guy giving orders is a strong addition. He goes way back with Jake, who himself goes way back with Carter – in fact, he says he’s in his debt, and is the wrong person to send after him. But Mulholland says Carter has infiltrated all the teams and Jake is the only qualified person he trusts.

So he goes along with the FBI Hostage Rescue Team. Their mission is to save Torres, believed to still be alive. His mission is to make sure Carter doesn’t survive, because of the “optics” of someone from the special forces teams blowing back like this. “No scrutiny, no trial,” Mulholland says. I found all the tension of this set up very effective. Jake should not be even standing up, let alone going on a mission, and also the whole thing seems dirty, plus he’s supposed to kill someone he cares about. But those are terrorists who might blow up a bunch of people so if he has a (one last) shot he’s gonna take it.

In this one I didn’t think much at all about how they Nunn and d.p. Joseph R. Fitzgerald (MISTLETOE MIXUP) pulled it off, but I did consider that maybe a drawback to doing it in real time is that they can’t use a cut to move characters to another location, so we have to watch this whole team just marching through woods for several minutes to get to the abandoned cold war era hideout where the hostages are being held. I thought about how in a crime movie like BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99 or THE MASTERMIND I absolutely love zeroing in on the mundane details of a crime, so maybe people more into military action might get that sort of kick out of it. And in fact, as little of a shit as I give about “tactical action,” and as much as I prefer poetic exaggeration to realism, I did get into the spirit of it. Watching as they breach the place, call in a specialist to deal with a tripwire, send in a drone to get a view of the rest of the building… I admit it, it’s interesting.

I prefer punching and kicking to shooting, but the gun-based skirmishes here are exciting. I loved the tension of a standoff occurring after one soldier realized he stepped on a pressure plate that will set off an IED if he moves. Then he has to shoot some guys. Of course, I’m also happy that the guns are not always available and that one of Carter’s henchmen is played by Kane Kosugi, who was in his father Sho Kosugi’s ninja movies as a child and co-starred in the Adkins classic NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR thirteen years ago. They get two pretty solid fights in this.

Thinking back on ONE MORE SHOT I remember being more awed by its action achievements. They were running around an empty airport, inside and out, they had falls and stuff. This one is mostly in sort of a mansion with some tunnels under it. But returning action directors Dan Styles (BOUDICA) and Tim Man (BOYKA: UNDISPUTED) once again do a great job of flowing through a variety of weapons, styles and match ups so it never gets dull. And there’s some good vehicle business later on. I’ll be vague about that partly because I think it’s much cooler than it would sound if I said what it is.

I’ve always been generally more appreciative of long take gimmicks than some people are, and to those people I’ve always defended this series as using it in a non-flashy way that might not bother them. But here I appreciated it more than ever, not even for the technical difficulty, but just as a method of telling a cinematic story. It’s the opposite of shakycam because every moment has to be carefully choreographed to appear in frame at the right time. The camera is constantly moving to the exact place it needs to be for information to be conveyed, or where somebody is gonna speak, or where they’re gonna get popped. So for me it creates a rhythm, and a feeling of cinematic omniscience, a confidence that I’m good hands.

I’ve watched each of these upon release, never close together. Now that there’s a full trilogy I think it would be interesting to marathon them some time. One possible drawback is that I remember feeling like the fight between Adkins and Michael Jai White in part 2 was setting things up for a larger confrontation in the finale, so it might feel weird that we (it turns out) never see White’s character again. But otherwise I suspect these play well together, because each one has a different location, set of characters and scenario within its limited format, so they’re different from regular sequels. They’re like new sequences instead of recycled stories. I bet they’ll play pretty well as chapters of one big story. But that’s only my hunch.

One thing that’s interesting from re-reading my reviews of the others is that in ONE SHOT I questioned the politics of the soldiers complaining that a new president was shutting down their horrific torture factory to focus on domestic terrorism, which they didn’t seem to believe was a real threat. So it’s kind of cool that ultimately it does turn out to be domestic terrorism going on here. And while of course it’s action movie number 6.9 trillion to worship special ops soldiers, it also paints a picture of a corrupt world where wars are fought for money, governments betray their soldiers, soldiers betray their countries, no flags are waved.

And that brings me to the main reason ONE LAST SHOT works so well for me: the surprising nuances of the villain. I didn’t even care that he’s not played by some martial artist who can have a very involved duel with Adkins. I love that Cree really doesn’t play him as evil. Both Jake and Carter seem to genuinely not want to fight, but to convince each other of their perspectives. I was a little bothered by the first film’s (accidental, due to timing) implication that it was a huge mistake to end the war with Afghanistan. Here Carter doesn’t necessarily indicate a belief that the war was wrong and/or aimless, but he feels that he and his friends ultimately sacrificed their sanity, relationships and lives only for the benefit of profiteers. It’s a tried-and-true practice to have a villain who has a good point, but this one sounds more sane about it than usual.

It made me think of Ed Harris in THE ROCK, though not as honorable, since Carter is really planning to hurt people. But he comes across as a nice guy. When he calls Jake’s wife (Jill Winternitz, HAVOC) as an old family friend it doesn’t play to me like a threat to Jake but a sincere attempt at see, I’m reasonable, I tipped off your family to get away from the danger.

So I got very involved in the complications of the character drama. You don’t expect that when you hear “one shot movie about Scott Adkins trying to stop terrorists.” So it ends up feeling like a very satisfying conclusion even without topping the previous chapter in the scale of the action.

ONE LAST SHOT is now available on VOD.