One Last Shot, Starring Scott Adkins

You can tell someone is an unserious person if they use the term “forever war” mere hours into a military action. That said, Navy SEAL Jake Harris is starting to feel like he is stuck on a forever mission. First his SEAL Team was ordered to escort a terrorist financier back to America, but the black site holding him in Poland was ambushed, in One Shot. Then the same cabal tried to take Harris out in the DC airport to prevent his debrief in One More Shot. After all that fighting, Harris must join yet another operation to take out the mastermind behind the imminent terror attack in James Nunn’s One Last Shot, which just released on VOD and DVD.

Between the first two movies, Harris has already taken a heck of a beating, but he is still ticking—just barely. Nevertheless, Admiral Mulholland orders Harris to tag along with another SEAL Team. Their orders are to rescue the hostages taken by Elliot Carter (only one “t” in Elliot, otherwise viewers might confuse him with the classical composer, right?) and his team of mercs. However, first and foremost, Mulholland demands Harris terminate Carter, because he is a former SEAL. The politically savvy admiral understands the scandal will look better if the Teams handle their own dirty laundry.

However, the hostage crisis should be a more pressing concern. Carter deliberately orchestrated the dirty bomb scare in One More Shot to gather the Joint Chiefs together in one spot, where he could capture them. Using their biometrics, he intends to deactivate the American missile defense system. However, he is missing their civilian counterbalance, national intelligence director Elena Torres, who has thus far eluded Carter’s men.

One Last Shot maintains the continuous tracking shot gimmick of the first two films, but the seams are more conspicuous this time around. The action also falls short of the spectacular heights of the second film. Honestly, One More Shot is pound-for-pound one of the best action movies of the 2020s. One Last Shot just cannot match its adrenaline-charged energy and take-no-prisoners fight choreography (few films could).

It is also deeply disappointing that screenwriter Jamie Russell casts American veterans as the real villains. Frankly, his screenplay betrays the spirit of the first two films, in which Harris pointedly tells the audience people always ask him how many people he has killed when they learn he is a SEAL, but they never ask how many people he saved. Honestly, the film is also an insult to American servicemen and vets.

That is a real shame, because the trilogy has been such a great showcase for Scott Adkins. Right from the start, he looks convincingly as if he has been pulled through the ringer as Harris. Steven Cree is just okay as Carter. Arguably, One Last Shot could really use a nemesis for Harris with martial arts chops and screen presence comparable to that of Michael Jai White in One More Shot. Frustratingly for fans, the mighty Dolph Lundgren has no action duties playing Admiral Mulholland, but he certainly looks and sounds commanding. However, Hannah Ware exceeds expectations, portraying Torres as surprisingly steely for a movie intelligence agency appointee.

If you haven’t seen One More Shot yet, that is where you should start (and then work backward before finishing the trilogy). Adkins does some great work throughout the three films, but the Debt Collector and Accident Man duologies achieve an even higher level of two-fisted entertainment, more consistently (pretty much from the first seconds of the first films, throughout the closing moments of the concluding instalments). To frustrating to recommend (due to its depiction of treasonous SEALs), One Last Shot is now available on VOD and DVD.