User reviews

This shows why not to make a movie from the first draft. If the writers had done a little work on this, it could have been quite good. I don't know how Texas Rangers dress, nor do I care. MI-6 enlists him to help catch or kill a terrorist who's planning mass destruction in London. The terrorist is of course Irish, his main henchman is a Russian who is nearly indestructible. The fights he has with the ranger are ridiculously over the top. And repetitive. The ranger constantly, and without for the most part, his own gun, blasts heavily armed terrorists away again and again. Malkovich, for the first time in any role, sleep walks through this. Guess he needed a few bucks. Direction is pedestrian. This could have been so much better.

The idea is outlandishly stupid, but has potential for a fun fish out of water film.

Thomas Jane plays a caricature of a texas ranger straight out of a western movie. He comes across an international terrorist robbing banks in Texas for some stupid reason and is then recruited by "British Intelligence" as they call it in the film to track and identify him in london.

The terrorist plans to set off some nuclear device or something stupid like that, aided by some Russian gangsters, Islamic terrorists and an assortment of other stereotypes.

What sounds like the setup to a fun Beverly Hills Cop style fish out of water action comedy ends up being a bore, with most of the jokes falling flat, Thomas Jane and his British female partner having zero chemistry, and the villains turning into a joke as the movie goes on.

John Malkovich is in it for an easy payday as a British Agent, doing his best impression of the old microsoft windows text to speech robot voice, whilenot even hiding his American accent.

The opening scene is pretty good with Thomas Jane tracking down a drunk Indian horse thief for some petty crimes and being a hardass about it.

From there on it's just downhill.

Thomas Jane has zero character development throughout the movie. He never grows. They do nothing with the fish out of water scenario. No character development for his female partner as well. They remain static cardboard cutouts. The whole cultural aspect is never really played with, probably for fear of offending people with stereotypes.

Structurally, the film is an absolute mess. The entire London plot goes nowhere and the finale takes place in the Texas desert again, just where the story started. This renders the entire London part, the center of the movie, superfluous. You don't send your hero on a globe trotting adventure only to end up where he started.

There is a fight with Thomas Jane and an oversized muscular Russian gangster again. Three of them actually. They utilize all kinds of household items and kitchenware again. This could have been a great callback to the fight scene in Punisher. However, they lack humor here. The violence and amount of damage each character takes is equally ridiculous here, but lacking the opera music and likeable side characters from Punisher, it just comes off as uninspired here.

Also, if you're going to have 3 fights against the same villain, there should be some character development. Maybe the villain could have gained some respect for Jane's character over their encounters. He had no real reason to follow the main villain. He was a mercenary.

So much wasted potential.

Also, how cheap do you have to be to use digital blood instead of squibs? Oftentimes the bullet wounds look like low resolution overlays. They aren't even always tracked right, which tells me they had some underpaid kid there adding them in on after effects. Thomas Jane coproduced this. How can you produce your own star vehicle like this, and then mess something as simple as squibs in an action film?

Very disappointing.

All that being said, I generally enjoy seeing Thomas Jane on screen. He lost his leading man flair, but he's still good. A shame he joined the dollar bin direct to video crew like Liam Neeson, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson and others. This film wasted a good idea with a bad screenwriter and poor direction, though given the budget, I don't want to place too much blame on the director. Still, he put his name on it and not Alan Smithee. Should have had more pride in his work.

Who the hell writes such nonsense? The amount of brain farts is so large I even had a suspicion that maybe the AI has already been made to write the script. Or if it was written by humans then they deserve to be replaced by AI. I can't decide what was more ridiculous, the way Thomas Jane speaks, or the way he limps around like an old man with rheumatism and yet is able to fist fight a 200 pound MMA fighter on steroids. Times must be really bad when even a legend like John Malkovich can't avoid such stink bombs. He's been getting a lot of them lately. I feel cheated. Seeing names like Thomas Jane and John Malkovich, one might assume that there is some good in the film, but no.

So, fair disclaimer ahead of time, I'm a pretty big fan of most of Thomas Jane's stuff. He's had some great roles that I really enjoyed, and I hoped that this movie would be another chance for him to shine.

Unfortunately, it really wasn't a chance for anyone to shine at all, not even John Malkovich.

Not exactly sure what I expected, I guess I just expected a decent action movie with a Texas Ranger chasing after a criminal. You know, normal stuff. What we got was a weird knock-off of Walker Texas Ranger with a bad script, acceptable fight scenes, and a lot of cliché lines that didn't fit the movie at all. It's like an AI took a bunch of segments from a handful of the most popular action movies and just slapped it all together to create this .... I'm not even sure what to call it. It's just a bunch of oddly disconnected scenes that don't make a lot of sense and are stitched together.

I would also like to point out how ridiculous the gun-play was. Because after realizing half-way through that the story was a bust, I thought maybe things can be somewhat redeemed with a few good gun battles. However, the directors of this movie clearly decided to roll with an emphasis on flashy, and completely ignore believable. There are several scenes where dozens of rounds are fired from handguns that can only hold half that amount. Rifles are given to the main characters from "tactical/strike teams" without sights. Rocket launchers are used on people like it's some kind of video game. Characters using machine guns one-handed, as if recoil doesn't exist and physics don't matter. It's like watching a bargain-bin 80's action movie from the local dollar store, but without the charm, awesome hairstyles, cool cars, and mirrored aviators worn by the main character.

Anyhow, I'm done wasting my time with this review, already wasted far too much time watching this movie. Swing, and a miss. Better luck next time, Thomas Jane.

Frankly,the only good thing about this movie is the title. Everything else is just bad.

Apart from thomas jane accent nothing else adds life to it.

The scenes are patched up to create something but it just doesnt cut it in the end.

For instance there plane alex travelled with was a 737 but he landed on an airbus..seems he changed flight mid air.

The movie started out quite well.in the mexican deserts of texas..then slowly it wandered off course drastically.

It jumps from a cowboy quest to a terrorist plot in a heart beat,without giving us the background of how it got there.

Some characters appear and disappear without a clear follow up.

To call this movie bad is an understatement.

I would not recommend a sit and watch for an hour because its a waste of time and vision,unless offcourse you are short of movies to watch.

I stumbled upon "One Ranger," a 2023 action thriller featuring Thomas Jane and John Malkovich, without knowing much about it. However, with such talented actors attached to the project, I was eager to give it a chance. To my delight, the storyline was a classic police versus criminal tale, which I found entertaining despite its familiar tropes. Writer and director Jesse V. Johnson deserves credit for crafting an engaging script that kept me hooked from beginning to end. Throughout the 95-minute runtime, the pacing was just right. The film struck a perfect balance between action and character development, which made for a thoroughly enjoyable experience. The cast was well-chosen, with Thomas Jane and Dominique Tipper delivering strong performances. The only minor downside was John Malkovich's peculiar delivery, which was distracting at times and made it difficult to take his role seriously. The action sequences were well-executed and complemented the movie perfectly. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by "One Ranger" and would recommend it to fans of the genre.

I was in the mood for a low Budget b-movie. I just noticed this one could been interesting. The trailer was acceptable and Malkovich was in it.

So, consequently I downloaded for free and after 20 minutes I just noticed everything starts to make nonsense. I mean, I was not expecting an Oscar winning script, but at least a decent one. I was wrong.

The movie itself is an insult to intelligence. Really damb decisions from all the characters and really, really predictable from beginning till the end.

To add, John Malkovich is the worst acting part here. Why he is trying hard to speak so slow and have British fake accent?

So, overall a bad B-movie that could have been far better with a more risky adult oriented script.

As I sat down to watch the 2023 action thriller "One Ranger", I had actually never heard about the movie. But seeing that the movie had Thomas Jane and John Malkovich on the cast list, I figured that the movie from writer and director Jesse V. Johnson might not be all that shabby.

And the storyline turned out to be one of those good old fashioned police versus criminal type of stories. It was actually an enjoyable storyline, generic in its own rights perhaps, but entertaining nonetheless. So writer Jesse V. Johnson did put together a good script here, as I was genuinely entertained from start to end.

The pacing of the narrative throughout the 95 minutes that the movie ran for was good. There was a good combination of action and character development, which kept the movie interesting.

Needless to say that the acting performances in the movie were good. The movie was nicely cast by leading actor Thomas Jane and Dominique Tipper. Nick Moran was also nicely cast and added something enjoyable to the movie. I have to say that the way that John Malkovich was delivering his dialogue in the movie was just weird, it took away from the feel of the movie and it was sort of difficult to take him serious in his role in the movie.

The action sequences in "One Ranger" were good and definitely added to the enjoyment of the movie.

If you enjoy action thrillers then I will say that director Jesse V. Johnson's 2023 movie "One Ranger" is well worth watching.

My rating of "One Ranger" lands on a six out of ten stars.

And here is the paradox. If you are old enough to remember when Tom Jane was a hot-ticket A-lister, ditto for John Malkovich, then unfortunately you are also old enough to remember when both Dennis Weaver and Clint Eastwood did this same story (the former on TV, the latter in a feature), and did it much better. Just about every aspect of the production is weak, but most especially the writing and the editing. Director Johnson, best known for his completely forgettable "B" action flicks, does absolutely nothing to raise his reputation. In fact, ONE RANGER violates one of the "commandments" of film-making, which is to never make the villain more interesting than the hero. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

I was looking forward to a rare appearance from Thomas Jane; but, he could only do so much with the script he was handed. Good acting all around; but, the character development seemed rushed and plot seemed poor, predictable and dull at times (and the ending seemed very highly unlikely). His partner handles everything on her own and is in over her head, with the usual irate boss and the Ranger is left to do most things without the benefit of carrying a weapon of his own-- and I could not understand exactly what the Ranger style of investigation really was and how his visit to London impacted the case. Just tepid and lukewarm all the way around. Potential that never really rose to being memorable or anything more than bland. I wanted to like it, I really did. Dominique Tipper was very good, but her London boss (Malkovich) didn't even have a British accent. Great to see Patrick Bergin and Jess Liaudin played his part very well, whereas Dean Jagger was a bit wooden. Could have been so much more than just "McCloud goes to Manchester". Tired subject, poorly written; but, decently acted.

I can't decide which character was the most annoying and irritating, Thomas Jane with this phony cowboy accent faking a deep Sam Elliott tone trying to emulate Clint Eastwood, Dominique Tipper with her accent and entire character unconvincing, or John Malkovich speaking so slow and slurred like he was drunk in every scene. Just one of those characters are enough to make watching this film irritating, but having to put up with all three throughout the entire 95 min runtime was unbearable. The only convincing and entertaining characters were Dean Jagger and Jess Liaudin.

Then there's the predicable, convoluted, logic-defying and plot-hole riddled screenplay that has so much happening in the normally comfortable 95 min runtime, the irritating characters and slow pacing made everything that was happening oddly boring and uninteresting. The narrative and dialog was just a lot of nonsense, filler, with very little substance. I get that this was a low budget B film, but it was just a bunch of cliched narratives thrown all together to try and make an interesting story, and it failed. Maybe I would've enjoyed it a little more with less annoying and cliched characters, but as it was, it was painful to watch. Sure there were a few decent action scenes, but that's it.

A decent first 3 minutes followed by an hour of mind numbing stupidity. Instead of flying the cast and crew overseas they could have just hired a decent writer to clean up this disaster. There is nothing coherent about this movie. Scene after scene were just dumb sequences of events that summed up to nothing.

One suspends disbelief for the sake of a fantastical story. This movie not only required that but also piece of your soul. Watching this made me feel like I died a little. A terrible waste of my time that I can never get back.

I cannot recommend this to anyone. You would get better entertainment watching reruns of your favorite tv shows.

I wanted to like this movie but the actors and actresses and their poorly executed accents made it extremely difficult.

First off we have Thomas Jane who is supposed to be a Texas Ranger and as a born and raised Texan I have to say he not only tried way to hard but he would be called a faker and ran out of any dirt road Texas town speaking the way he does in this movie. Its the type of Texas accent that non-natives use to make fun of Texans. So to say he over does it is putting it mildly.

Now for John Malceviche it's like he does not even try to sound like anyone ever born anywhere in the UK. It makes me wonder if he ever bothered to listen to himself talk in this movie. Its a shame that not a single person even mentioned it to him. He sounds like someone from his own little world in this movie.

As for the other actors and actresses who were all born in or around the UK. Well I cant say any of them did much better here. I mean I'm by no means a sociolinguistics major but the smattering of over done, under done, an UK accents made this movie so annoyingly difficult to watch I was barely able to endure half the movie before I turned it off out of sheer frustration.

This movie is Bad, Weak storyline and not at all believable. The usual best of the best to go after the worst of the worst and also a super bad terrorist. Pure Do - Do , I expected a somewhat good movie , But was sadly mistaken , I won't be recommending this to anyone , I will say watch at your own risk and be prepared to be Bored. It did have a chance at being a good movie , It Failed at the attempt, Money not well spent to produce this Stinker and definitely don't do a sequel at all. So watch at your own Risk , Just know you have been warned. You can only blame yourself if you watch it and get upset.

One Ranger is in the structure of a Western with a modern flair. The film, in some respects, is Henry Hathaway's True Grit meets James Bond; however, to try to reduce its description to a cliche is not to do the film justice. One of the truly compelling aspects of the film is how it manages to effectively incorporate the elements of the Western genre with modern spy and action films without feeling disjointed, or seeming to be confused about its identity. This film has a solid through line, steeped in the Classic Western genre, which provides part of the reasons it works so well. From the opening moments of the film we meet the grizzled and persistent main character, played masterfully by Thomas Jane. We learn that he is a law enforcement presence to be reckoned with. He is smart, persistent, and a marksmen in the most literal sense. He establishes himself as, not only the namesake of the film, but as a character we are anxious to know more about. As the film's plot unfolds Jane finds himself in an unlikely partnership with British intelligence tracking an international terrorist that murdered his deputy. For any other film, and any other Director, this dichotomous approach to genres could have gone very, very wrong- but not here. It makes for an interesting, engaging, and well done action film. The film is violent and filled with action, but the violence here is not gratuitous, and not excessive. Everything here has its place. In last year's review of Johnson's White Elephant I wrote, "Johnson has a penchant for broken characters with characteristics that make it hard not to look past their awful deeds, and be romanced by them in their quasi-redemption. This is true whether he is the writer and Director of his own material like Savage Dog, Accident Man, or the brilliant Debt Collector films; or whether he is Directing someone else's story, like Nina Bergman in the masterful, Hell Hath No Fury." Thomas Jane's character fits this bill, to a degree. While we don't know too much about his past, he does seem to be a more righteous and upstanding character than many of Johnson's leads; not because he is a lawman, but simply because that is his essence. Thomas Jane really nails this role. He manages to play this closely guarded character with the posture that has the audience routing for him, loving his refusal to compromise his values (or wardrobe), and wanting more. While there are times in the movie his role harkens to more hyperbolic anti-heroes, like Rambo, The Punisher, or, even, Dirty Harry he never breaks from the framework of the realistic foundation set for him early on by Jane and Johnson- he avoids going for the pithy line, or the violent action, that would, initially, be satisfying but cheapen the film. I think there is enough substance here to substantiate future installments of a "One Ranger Series" of films. Dominique Tipper is very substantial as the British intelligence agent trying to be the bridge between the formality of British protocol and Jane's personal and unique style of pursuing this dangerous terrorist. She is a great companion to Jane's character, as well as a singular force to be reckoned with. Dean Jagger's performance is one of the highlights of the film. At any moment, the easy path would have been to play his character as an "over the top" mega villain with hard edges and a maniacal demeanor. He could have morphed into a comic book villain, easily. That is not the path chosen here. Jagger is a ruthless and bad guy, as well as a formidable foe in this film; however, he is oddly relatable and, somewhat, sympathetic in Jagger's performance. He is very good in One Ranger. The leading characters are well supported by a strong cast, many that afficionados of Johnson's films might recognize. John Malkovich returns to Johnson's stable as a British intelligence division head, balancing the goal of capturing the terrorist and reigning in this Texas Lawman. Malkovich's role is not large, but not one second he is on the screen is wasted-this is Malkovich in top form. The cinematography, action, and violence is at the level you can expect from a Jesse V. Johnson film. We have always remarked that no modern filmmaker can do more with a modest film budget than Johnson. His films are fun to watch and One Ranger is no exception. Violence, gun play, and bloodshed abound, and is well placed. The fight choreography is gritty and realistic. While I have been fortunate enough to interview Johnson twice, I am still truly in awe of how deep his appreciation, understanding, and homage to good film runs. This film is shot, particularly, the Texas range scenes, in a classic style. There are several shots of Jane shooting, and even drinking from his canteen, that have such a deliberate feel they are stunning. It is well shot and well edited. I love Johnson films. This is one of his best. I highly recommend One Ranger. One Ranger will release in select theaters and VOD on May 5, with a physical media release (DVD/Blue-ray) shortly after on June 13, 2023.

I've seen some rubbish in my time but this totally and utterly blows all the other rubbish out of the water 😂 From the terrible acting to the ridiculous directing, I'm totally blown away but my how bad the whole thing is.

John Malkovic must be embarrassed to have lent his name and reputation to this terrible excuse of a movie.

To call it a movie is a compliment , I honestly have never ever seen anything like it.

At one point they are supposed to be in London but there are Suffolk signs everywhere including the famous Ipswich town football club.

It's just a horrendous example of laziness.

Avoid avoid avoid.

The only good thing about this movie was spotting the local buildings in sleepy Ipswich Suffolk, the Garret Anderson accident & emergency building, Ipswich county council building, Burtons old sweet factory. .and multiple views of the water front. .customs building included. . The movie was poor. .the desert screens may of been somewhere more exotic. There was even a shot of the abandoned little chief on the A14. .and a wonderful shot of Portman road football ground . .over all poorly filmed and acted, just didn't believe in the characters. . Bit of a poor man's Jack reacher to be fair. No doubt there'll make a One Ranger 2.

Alex Tyree (Thomas Jane) is the titular One Texas Ranger. He takes down a buggy full of criminals but one gets away. He is recruited by Agent Jennifer Smith (Dominique Tipper) from British Intelligence to retrieve Irish terrorist Declan McBride (Dean Jagger) who is imprisoned in Mexico. Declan escapes and is set to blow up London.

This starts off bad. His banter with Tom is supposed to be fun and endearing to the audience. I did not find that to be the case. His gun battle with the buggy four starts out good, but there is too much bad writing. Why doesn't he take his horse? How does a bad guy double back to take Tom hostage? At least, it's still in Texas. Once Agent Smith shows up, the movie goes down a bad rabbit hole. First, she's a non-descript British Intelligence. The writing should be more specific. Writer/director Jesse V. Johnson probably thought that it would be fun to have a cowboy and a British gentleman team up. I can see that pitch. I don't see it on the screen.

One Ranger is an exciting action movie starring Thomas Jane as a professional Texas Ranger, who joins forces with an agent from British Intelligence to prevent a dangerous IRA terrorist from carrying out a deadly attack in London. I think we can agree that there is still a need for old-school movies that are not saturated with CGI and revolve around superheroes similar to the ones we see these days in theaters. If the studio is planning to produce an upcoming film with Ranger Alex Tyree in a new adventure, I'll be glad to watch it because it's better than wasting my time and money on any Disney movie.

What I watched it for, and what I've enjoyed, is the two main protagonists - or rather actors playing said protagonists, Dominique Tipper and Thomas Jane. They pretty much reprise their performance in the Expanse TV show (just in a more earthly environment), but that's a good thing - a tired badass of a ranger and an energetic badass of an operative, it's all I wanted from this movie.

So that's good.

What's not good is everything else - the moment I start thinking about the plot, I wish I didn't for it's inexplicably cringy and hole-ridden; the moment I recall the performance of actors playing villains, I want to get back thinking about protagonists, or maybe even the plot; the moment I think about John Malkovich's acting in this movie, the villains stalt looking not half as bad as they did before.

So if you also want to watch another performance of Thomas Jane and Dominique Tipper, go for it, but be mindful (or mindless) about the rest. If you don't, just skip it - it's very bad otherwise.

Really I dont understand this movie. Every time they go after the bad guys they go with only one small gun, and the Ranger doesnt get to use a gun at all, except when he manages to get one from the gangsters. How stupid is this against mega armed gangsters?? And how come only one British Agent is assigned to deal with this presumed mega terrorist. Why are there only two people up against entire gangs of gunmen. Doesnt the British Intelligence establishment want them to succeed??? Pathetic storyline that doesnt make sense, and how they manage to survive being shot at so many times I really dont know!