One Child

There’s a considerable amount of restraint in the story’s telling.... Precisely because of its unflinching grimness, One Child is one of the most successful critiques of a broken system.

This isn't an easy movie to watch, but even at its most bleak, the scenes between the long-estranged mother and daughter are beyond poignant as they find common purpose.

Scenes of Mei trying to reconnect with her past has a few clever touches.... But it also has enough clunky dialogue, poor production values, and sluggish pacing to alienate viewers, too. [5 Dec 2014, p.77]

If it’s a flawed exploration of the old nature-vs.-nurture debate, the players and Mei’s predicament consistently make it interesting.

One Child spends too much time running in place--which may reflect China’s inert bureaucracy, but falls short of riveting viewing.

For all its clear outrage, One Child presents absolutely zero challenging ideas of what to do in reaction to these sort of crimes against humanity, other than to ostensibly deal with it.

Both the writing and the directing fall short in One Child, leaving good actors to work with material that’s mostly not there and viewers reminded of the fact that good intentions are not always enough.