Bland Action Films That Don’t Have Their Own Identity

PLOT: An ex-special forces operative goes off-the-grid when his daughter is kidnapped by a violent community. Alone and outnumbered, he’s forced to use every skill he has to track them down, take them apart, and bring his daughter home.

REVIEW: Remember the days when “my child is kidnapped, and I’m going to kill everyone in my path to get them back” was a subgenre all its own? I’ll never get tired of seeing a parent seek revenge on the bad guys. Now, we’re getting the pretty unique case of two films being released on the same day, with One Mile: Chapter One and One Mile: Chapter Two, and unfortunately, that’s where the uniqueness ends. These sadly follow the same formula we’ve seen time and time again.

The first film follows Danny (Ryan Phillippe) taking his daughter, Alex (Amélie Hoeferle), on visits to different college campuses. They’ve been estranged from each other due to his job with the special forces and never prioritizing his family. There’s tension there, but it all comes to a boil when she’s kidnapped by a crazy cult that needs women to be able to make babies. No, really, there’s this whole subplot of the government poisoning their water and making the women sterile. So they need new women in the island cult to help create new members for their community. The second film is more revenge-based, but it features an extremely similar plot, with Danny going all Commando on the cult to get his daughter back.

Phillippe does a pretty decent job when it comes to the action, but his character is nothing more than a generic tough guy. He struggles to connect with his daughter, and she resents him for how uninvolved he’s been in her life. I guess a good ol’ kidnapping is the solution to suddenly have a great father/daughter relationship. It doesn’t help that Amelie struggles a bit with the emotional moments. I will always love C Thomas Howell from his early days of The Hitcher and The Outsiders, and it’s fun to see him play a villain. But he’s not used nearly enough. We don’t really get to see the full scale of his influence over others.

I did like some of the hand-to-hand combat, and there’s a lot more death than I was expecting. But it never feels much different from what we’d see on cable TV, so it was pretty shocking to see that these films are rated R. Given the style of the story and how it’s presented, that feels like a miscalculation, as it would probably reach its intended audience with a PG-13. Which is weird for me to say since I’m always rooting for an R Rating, as it often feels more indicative of reality. Story-wise, there are some interesting elements like the island cult, but it’s never fully realized. It doesn’t help that everything feels very tired and done a thousand times before.

The stakes never feel properly calibrated to the reality of the situation. Even in the second film, when Alex has been kidnapped and taken as a means of revenge, it never feels like we’re out of second gear. It’s just repeating plot beats from the first film that weren’t fully realized to the point where we’re literally getting the same scenes. Maybe this would have worked had both films not been released on the exact same day as each other, but it makes the story feel like it’s going in circles.

I do have to get into light spoilers to be able to discuss the second film, but I’m not saying anything that the synopsis doesn’t already get into. Chapter One is better than Chapter Two in how it’s presented. It makes no sense that there are no repercussions from the events of the first film. How is this island still operating like nothing happened? Danny literally killed multiple people, and there doesn’t appear to be anything that has come from it. Everyone has essentially just moved on with their lives, and it makes very little sense. Wouldn’t there have been some sort of investigation?

Overall, both One Mile films are simply bland action movies that fail to bring anything new to the table. It wouldn’t matter if it executed tired tropes in a competent way, but everyone is just going through the motions. They each have pretty light runtimes, and this could have easily just been condensed into one film and probably would have been more satisfying. As is, there’s nothing to really latch onto here, and it’s doubtful the films will have any staying power.

One Mile: Chapter One and Chapter Two are now available to rent digitally.

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