OneWay

One Way (Vivendi 2009)

The film starts innocently enough… a beautiful summer day. A bunch of young kids running through the fields. Catching a young girl, pinning a girl down and raping her. Then a big black guy shows up and shoots everybody. Great… great first two minutes of the film. Really, more films should start this way.

One Way is complex drama built around lies and revenge. And some more rape. Eddy, a wealthy and successful partner of a big advertizing firm has what appears to be a charmed life. He’s just proposed to his beautiful fiancé- daughter of the owner of the firm, has a few good friends, and a few ‘extra’ women on the side.

Everything seems great for Eddy, till Eddy’s soon-to-be-brother-in-law Anthony decides to rape his best friend, Angelina- the one woman he hadn’t be sleeping with. Eddy swears revenge, but it stopped with the threat of ruining him with photos collected of all the women he had been cheating with.

Eddy is then forced to make a decision- protect his friend by testifying for her about the rape or lie to keep from losing his job and his fiancé. He gets blackmailed into lying in court, destroying Angelina’s case and making her look like a fool. Angelina then sees the opportunity for a bit of revenge and lies under oath in front of Eddy’s fiancé about having sex with him, getting everyone all pissed off at him and blowing his whole plan anyway.

During the trial we also finally find out for sure that Angelina was the same girl who was raped in the opening scene, and that none of the kids gunned down were ever found dead, and she had spent some time under psychiatric care after the event. She later tries to hang herself, only to be visited once again by “The General” – Michael Clark Duncan. He’s either a hallucination, a guardian angel, or maybe even God himself this time… but he’s there to watch over her.

And suddenly… DANCE PARTY!

Eddy tracks Anthony down at a club and bashes him in the face a few times before getting dragged off. Angelina shows up moments later in disguise, drugs Anthony’s drink, and drives him off towards the docks for some alone time. After handcuffing him to the steering wheel, she quotes back some of the same lines he used when raping her- he finally realizes what’s happening and that sobers him right the fuck up. She comes around with a big ol’ strap on and bumrapes him, puts a bullet in his head, then walks off smiling with The General beside her.

The movie closes with more time in court, tying everything up, as they try to pin everything on Eddy. Angelina won’t save him thanks to his earlier betrayal (part of that whole “revenge” theme) and things look grim till more testimony comes forward and they all live as happily as they can with a broken marriage, a dead guy, a ruined reputation, and a twice-raped ex-friend.

Despite a few scenes in the courtroom running a bit too long and detailed dragging down the pace a bit, overall it was still a great film with a heavily character-driven story.

3 of 4.

reviewed by Jeremy Gaggins