Film's One-Hit Wonders: 30 Directors With Only One Good Movie

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – April 15, 2018

Even the worst directors have one good film in them. Well, at least some of them do. In the gallery above, we've identified 30 filmmakers from the past four decades who have directed at least five features but have managed to receive positive reviews for just a single one of their films.

Robert Schwentke

The German director has yet to make an English-language film that critics have enjoyed, though he came close with his 2010 action-comedy RED starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, and Helen Mirren. Only his gory, German-language, 2002 crime thriller Tattoo has a Metascore in the green range.

Note that Schwentke directed two other German-language films (2003's Eierdiebe and 2017's Der Hauptmann) that are not included below. Neither was released in the United States and thus they do not have reviews (or scores) available.

The one good film:
66 Tattoo (2002)

Everything else:
53 Flightplan (2005)
47 The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)
60 RED (2010)
25 R.I.P.D. (2013)
42 The Divergent Series: Insurgent (2015)
33 The Divergent Series: Allegiant (2016)

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