God bless German actor Til Schweiger and his movie ‘One Way’. Not that ‘One Way’ is all that good by any reasonable stretch of the imagination but it is at least a ‘normal’ movie. By that I mean I don’t see any cameraman reflections in mirrors, any flubbed lines were edited out, the cinematographer at the very least had some training and sound guy remembered to turn the mixer on. You see I’ve seen really bad movies this past week… I mean really bad. So the opportunity to see a movie that was merely competent felt like manna from heaven.

When our film opens a young girl is being chased by four boys along a wooded lake, caught and subsequently gang raped. In the middle of this raping a big Black dude in a general’s uniform (Michael Clark Duncan) shows up and kills them. Or probably not since she was imaging it. I don’t think she was imaging the gang rape though, but I’m not sure. Anyways time has moved forward some years and we meet Eddie Schneider (Schwieger) who is a high flying adman having dinner at his boss’s house where he asks his boss for the hand in marriage to his pretty daughter Judy (Steffie Von Pfetten). Jokingly, boss man Mr. Birk (Art Hindle) says yes only on the condition that he close some big account the next day. Problem is that Eddie is quite the womanizer and was helly late to the meeting because he stopped off to bang some dudes wife on his way to work forcing him to greatly improvise but still using his natural charm to close the deal.

So Eddie and his assistant Angelina (Lauren Lee Smith) who is also his platonic best friend are all happy stuff you know, but after leaving work Angelina like forgets her keys in the office where boss man Birk’s asshole son Anthony (Sebastian Roberts) is hanging out, who rapes Angelina pretty brutally for no particular reason, not that rapist need a reason I guess. We’re all wondering what the hell is wrong with THAT dude. Eddie finds Angelina the next morning all raped out and takes her to the hospital and

then confronts Anthony who plays his Eddie Trump Card which has Eddie back-peddling like a circus clown on a unicycle. Next thing you know Eddie is a witness against his best buddy Angelina in court which will lead to Angelina moving into a monastery (?), attempting suicide, the re-emergence of the big Black general dude, a strap on dildo, a bullet to the head, a broken engagement, a firing, jail time, a spectacular court trial, an Eric Roberts sighting and a SHOCKING REVELATION and a joyful happy ending for everybody who’s not evil.

Convoluted thy name is ‘One Way’, which actually was going every which-a-way. I believe this is a film that suffered from the ‘wouldn’t it be cool’ factor. This usually occurs when a bunch of creative types get together to craft some kind of project with generally no supervision when one of them says ‘wouldn’t it be cool if…’. Wouldn’t it be cool if after she got raped, the guy from the Green Mile showed up and started shooting people? Yeah, that would be cool, but it would like cooler if we had like some Law and Order, Perry Mason type courtroom shit, now THAT would be cool! Cooler still if Eric Roberts was available because I love E-Rob. Yeah, I do too but it would be like cool if we had Angelina get all mad and put on huge 18 inch black strap on cock and anally rape that dude! Now THAT would be cool. Hell Yeah! We should also stick some nuns up in here too, know what I’m saying? All this stuff we’re doing is so cool… but what the hell is this movie about anyway? And that’s pretty much what you’re getting with ‘One Way’.

Now despite the incredibly overly complex and convoluted plot and the just plain outright ridiculousness of the narrative, ‘One Way’ was a very slick looking film, possessed some amusing and clever elements wedged within the crazy plot points, was very fortunate to have the very lovely Steffie Von Pfetten in its cast, whom we love not only because she’s disarmingly beautiful but also because girlfriend doesn’t look like she’s one to bypass a meal for the sake of thinness. Til Schwieger probably isn’t the most ‘dynamic’ actor around but I think he knows his limitations and as a producer of this flick he makes sure he plays to his strengths. Director Reto Salimbeni tries his very best to navigate through the myriad of plot points, left turns, right turns while trying to integrate Michael Clarke Duncan and flying nuns into this thing, though there’s only so much anybody can do with a narrative that gets as wildly out of control as this one got.

But at least it was competent. Other than the glitch of Angelina having her shirt buttoned in one angle during the rape and wide open in a side angle, the movie was competent and ‘normal’. Though I’m sure the quote ‘One Way – you won’t see a boom Mic in any scenes’ won’t make it on to any box covers no time soon, I’m pleased to say that I didn’t see any Boom Mic’s, and that pleases me immensely.