Like so many titles in The Shooting Gallery's invaluable film series—especially Croupier, Titanic Town, and Human Resources—Tony Barbieri's One was rescued from certain obscurity, a fate prescribed by its insistence on no-frills production values and minor-key melodrama. But in their own way, these qualities can be just as limiting as they are refreshing, and sometimes understatement is merely a euphemism when discussing a director who's content with making no statement at all. A quiet, determinedly bleak tale about two hard-luck friends searching for redemption, One is crafted with intelligence and restraint but little imagination, painting a portrait of working-class San Francisco that's conspicuously lacking in color or texture. But, to his credit, Barbieri sustains a careful, melancholic tone that suits the dead-end lives of his protagonists, a pair of thirtysomething males who discover their friendship and their future fading rapidly. Jason Cairns, who co-wrote the script with Barbieri, gives an affecting performance as an ex-con just released from prison for performing euthanasia on his terminally ill grandfather. Though a mild-mannered guy, Cairns' mercy killing puts a mark on his criminal record that keeps him from getting a decent job or fulfilling his ambition to be a teacher. With few options, he moves into the family home of boyhood friend Kane Picoy, an former minor-league ballplayer whose promising career was cut short after he struck a manager. Each is looking for a second chance, Cairns more vigorously than Picoy, but both privately wonder just how far their responsibilities to each other can continue to stretch. With its long takes and minimalist discretion, One channels European art cinema more than the typical American indie, but it's only an affectation, not an avenue to more fruitful character study. Barbieri's irritating habit of shooting much of the action through doorways is meant to give the film a voyeuristic quality, but instead he seems bored and distracted, right up through an arbitrarily "uncompromised" ending. When a director chooses to focus on an ashtray while his blurred-out characters share a moment in the background, it's hard not to question his priorities.