One Of These Days: Review

17th April 2023

Kyle Parson (Joe Cole) lives in a small town with his wife and child on the border between Texas and Louisiana. There doesn’t seem to be much happening there and people lead simple lives, trying to maintain their happiness.

One of those people is Joan Dempsey (Carrie Preston) and after her love life takes a downward turn, she decides to throw herself into her PR job and devices a ‘touch the truck’ competition. Clearly having to do something to distract herself from her life, Joan powers through even when things start to get worse for the contestants, one of which is Kyle who’s feeling the pressure with every waking hour.

One of These Days is a drama written and directed by Bastian Günther who attempts to take a look at a small slice of life in a seemingly aimless town. With many people gathered around the trick hoping for a chance to win, it shows that there are many and varied characters within this sleepy town.

The trouble is that director Günther doesn’t really know what he wants to do with his large cast of characters and has very little to say about the town in which they live. Depicted as ‘small town America’ there could have been many opportunities for the story. Having the story so closely focussing on a group of characters in an artificially confined situation could have led to drama and conflict between them as the story goes on.

However, it seems that Günther is so interested in shooting his movie with as much realism as possible that he forgets to plan out a plot. One of These Days may indeed show a slice of life in a small town, but it also reflects the boredom.

There are certain elements of character development, particularly from Kyle and Joan’s stories, but these fleeting moments are few and far between as there is an insistence to portray the competition as closely as possible.

In the end this makes One of These Days feel like a wasted opportunity with a cast who feel very underused. By reflecting the desperation of people trying to get something good out of their lives, it may leave the audience feeling tested past their limits.

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