From New York Times: Agliberto Melendez's murky thriller, ''A One-Way Ticket,'' is likely to give the shivers to anyone with tendencies toward claustrophobia. Based on an incident that took place in 1981, the film tells the story of a group of Dominicans who bribe dock officials in Santo Domingo to smuggle them aboard a ship bound for Miami. Agliberto Melendez's murky thriller, ''A One-Way Ticket,'' is likely to give the shivers to anyone with tendencies toward claustrophobia. Based on an incident that took place in 1981, the film tells the story of a group of Dominicans who bribe dock officials in Santo Domingo to smuggle them aboard a ship bound for Miami. The escape plan is jeopardized when an informant blows the whistle on them. After a last-minute inspection is ordered by the commander, the escapees are herded to the boat's only secure hiding place, its stifling ballast tank. One by one, more than 40 men cram themselves through a tiny portal into a hellhole in which they are told there will be enough oxygen to sustain them for only half an hour once the lid is bolted. When the inspection drags on and the ship's departure is delayed, the bribed crew members collaborate in a crazy last-ditch cover-up scheme, deliberately flooding the tank to show no one could possibly be there. ''A One-Way Ticket,'' which has screenings tonight and tomorrow at the Museum of Modern Art as part of the New Directors/New Films series, is billed as the first feature made in the Dominican Republic. Filmed with mostly nonprofessional actors, it combines the pacing of a thriller with the feel of a social documentary as it examines the despair and corruption bred by conditions so hopeless that those determined to come to the United States will offer up their life savings and endure almost any hardship. Though the movie has its gripping moments, the director is less interested in generating suspense than in expressing his outrage at a situation that could produce such a tragedy. The movie's thriller and documentary modes tend to work at cross-purposes. At the beginning, we are introduced to several of the would-be refugees in cinema verite-style sequences that convey a palpable sense of an oppressive physical and social climate. But the characters remain too shadowy to engage much sympathy. Once the stowaways have boarded the ship, the movie switches gears to become a conventional race-against-time adventure. Only at very the end does it revert to a semidocumentary style. Its most lasting images are of the poor men trapped in the sealed tank, frantically thrashing against the drum.