Movie review: ‘One Fall’ is more ??? than 007

It’s fair to say Marcus Dean Fuller took on one job too many making the well-intended metaphysical drama “One Fall.” Although he proves both an appealing lead and an OK director, Fuller’s script, which he wrote with Richard Greenberg, shorthands so much of the story’s specifics that, despite its grander ambitions, the film ultimately feels minor and superficial.

Fuller stars as James Bond (read into that what you will), a would-be doctor who survived not only a car accident that killed his mother but later a 200-foot fall from a cliff. The latter apparently left him with mysterious healing powers that subsequently landed him in prison.

Bond returns to his estranged hometown, conspicuously named One Fall, to find that his father (Mark La Mura) has had a stroke, his doctor-brother (James McCaffrey) is dating James’ ex-fiancée (Zoe McLellan) and an annoying, comic book-worshiping teen (Seamus Mulcahy) has moved in next door. What follows is Bond’s divisive attempt at “healing for dollars,” which finds him curing — or does he? — an elderly cancer patient (Phyllis Somerville) and a victim of multiple sclerosis (LeeAnne Hutchison), among others.

Only his dying father remains out of James’ therapeutic reach for reasons that, like so much else here, feel more contrived than explicable.

“One Fall.” MPAA rating: PG-13 for some violence and brief nudity. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes. At Laemmle’s Sunset 5, West Hollywood.