"One of These Days" - Film Review
There’s a yearly competition in a small Texas town called Hands On. Each year, twenty lucky people are selected to place one hand on a brand new truck. They have to keep their hand there all day and all night, rain or shine. The last one standing wins the truck. This competition provides the framework for One of These Days. The events in the film are fictitious, but it does provide an imperfect glimpse into the reality of small-town life in the rural south of the United States.
One of These Days has a distinctly European sensibility to it, which makes sense given the number of German production companies involved in the film. Instead of understanding the desperation that leads these contestants to participate, it feels as though the film is gawking at them. It doesn’t understand the nuances of small towns and creates characters that feel like stereotypes. There’s a clear hopelessness in each of the competitors, and in Kyle (Joe Cole) most of all, that fuels them to continue to stand by that vehicle hour after hour. The truck is much more than a mode of transportation. It’s hope. It will be the thing that gets them back on track, the thing that’s going to break their cycle of poverty and usher in an era of prosperity.
There are flashes of greatness. The highly saturated colors, coupled with a yellowish hue, create an unsettling atmosphere that’s simmering with tension. The pop of the blue truck against the dusty Texas landscape and the gray, empty parking lot make it difficult to look away. It draws the audience’s attention to the reason we’re all here. The Hands On event also creates the potential for a claustrophobic social experiment that delves into the true psyche of small-town America.
©Flare Film Beau Coulon
The problem is that One of These Days keeps abandoning the people in the competition for the life of the woman who hosts the event (Carrie Preston). She’s a compelling character in her own right, but what’s unique to One of These Days is the competition. It’s how these people slowly fall apart as they’re standing there. The more sleep-deprived they get, the deeper the desperation settles in. As people start to willingly walk away, the audience feels a bit robbed that we don’t get to understand why they’re deciding to leave. Obviously, the number must dwindle, but who leaves and who stays feels arbitrary. There was a real opportunity to dig into the psyches of these people and make the audience feel just as trapped and desperate as those with one hand on the truck, but One of These Days strays too far from its central source of tension.
The film’s final twenty minutes are a bizarre epilogue to what should have been the actual ending. The action undercuts the already shaky ground the film ended on and its existence feels head-scratchingly insincere. One of These Days was not subtle by any means, but managed to convey some interesting themes of social issues through the Hands On competition. A tighter focus and more editing could have turned this film into a scathing commentary about life in the American rural south.
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