A Charming if Unbelievable Rom-Com Crime Caper

John Swab went to the school of cinema. He’s learned from watching the most important directors how to elevate genre material and low budgets into something memorable, unique, and sometimes masterful. One Day as a Lion is not his best film, but it’s an interesting experiment of sorts for the prolific filmmaker; it’s his first time directing someone else’s screenplay, and the exercise is undoubtedly valuable for him. While it may not crackle with the tight and tense efficiency of his best work, it also displays a kindness and silliness that’s sometimes alien from Swab’s films, for better or worse, and it’s fascinating to see how he directs it.

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Scott Caan wrote One Day as a Lion and stars as its lead character, Jackie Powers, a lovable loser who needs quick money to hire a lawyer for his imprisoned son. He takes on a hit for a gangster he knows, but is unable to murder the assigned target, botching the entire thing and leading him down a strange road. He starts by holding Lola hostage; she’s a disaffected waitress who witnessed the entire incident, and quickly figures out a way to use Jackie for her own advantages. Covering a variety of fun characters in a Tarantino-like fashion, the script feels like a throwback to criminal rom-coms like Something Wild and A Life Less Ordinary.

A Botched Murder and a Faked Engagement

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One Day as a Lion has a phenomenal beginning, with opening credit titles and music that hearken back to Tony Scott and Michael Mann. Swab’s use of focus is wonderful in the opening sequence, as Jackie drives up to a diner in order to carry out the hit. The target is Walter (a phenomenal J.K. Simmons), a bearded Southerner who appears to value the Second Amendment more than human life itself. Jackie screws up the hit and ends up killing the grumpy old cook while Walter gets away, and Lola saw the whole thing. He chases after her, but is probably more terrified and confused than she is. He’s not good at violence.

Lola is the daughter of a wealthy woman nicknamed ‘the black widow’ (hilariously played by Virginia Madsen). Throughout her four marriages, she’s garnered a small fortune, but refuses to give any of it to Lola unless her daughter is married. For a woman with so many dead husbands, she values men a lot. The plan is then for Jackie to pose as Lola’s husband, which will help him get the money to pay for his son’s lawyer, and will help Lola pursue her acting dreams. Unbeknownst to them, the gangsters who arranged the hit are looking for them, while they figure out what to do with Walter.

It’s messy but fun, and Swab always keeps things moving. He and his producer, Jeremy Rosen, have a knack for finding just the right locations, and no matter how unrealistic the film gets, it always looks great and seems to exist in a natural, authentic space.

A Weaker John Swab Film That’s Nonetheless Fast Fun

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It’s almost always unbelievable when a couple of people meet and fall sweepingly in love within a few days, but it’s even more unbelievable when one of them is holding the other hostage or has just committed a murder in front of them. Like The Chase with Kristi Swanson and Charlie Sheen or Overboard with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, it stretches the suspension of disbelief, and that’s certainly the case with One Day as a Lion.

For instance, Jackie and Lola fall for each other after a few days of minimal conversation, Lola uses her acting skills in a completely unbelievable legal scene, and everything kind of just works out. The characters feel like characters, cogs in the plot’s wheel, men and women as mere machinations. That’s understandable, though; it’s almost impossible to make a tight, quick film that uses the criminal rom-com trope and actually spend the time fleshing out the characters so that their decisions don’t seem so ridiculous. Jonathan Demme’s masterpiece, Something Wild, did it, but was 30 minutes longer than One Day as a Lion.

The sacrifice in runtime does pay off with how the film feels — fun and frenetic. The cast is mostly wonderful here, especially Simmons, Madsen, and Frank Grillo as a profane but oddly reasonable crime lord. Will Stone continues his top-notch cinematography for Swab, as does David Sardy with his score. Swab has assembled a veritable Avengers team of lo-fi, independent filmmaking over the years, a cast and crew that follow him from project to project, and it’s easy to see why. Even his weaker material has a glow.

One Day as a Lion will be available in Select Theaters on April 4, 2023 and On Digital and On Demand on April 7, 2023, courtesy of Lionsgate.

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