Imagine stepping into a parallel universe and watching a prisoner being escorted to his death. Cautious the men around him keep an eye out while the prisoner senses that something is wrong. Then out steps a man and kills the prisoner who looks entirely identical to him..
…and he’s played by none other than Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson!
That was the plan, before Jet Li assumed the role of Gabe in ‘The One’ – a Science Fiction about a superhuman martial arts expert facing off against an equally powerful version of himself from an alternate universe.
We are introduced to the first two Jets: Lawless, as he is killed by another version of himself called Yulaw. Yulaw has one mission – to kill off every version of himself in all parallel Universes to become ‘The One’, an all powerful being.
Yulaw is captured but escapes almost instantly and travels to our universe to kill the last remaining ‘Jet’ – a Police Officer named Gabe Law.
He is followed by some Multiverse agents who want to arrest him – Harry Roedecker, played by Delroy Lindo and Evan Funsch, played by a young Jason Statham.
Jet Li vs Jet Li
This movie seems to be frowned upon by critics, but when you just wanna watch for a bit of fun, the Sci Fi Jet vs Jet seems to do the trick!
I’m a fan of Science Fiction and (obviously) Martial Arts movies, so it’s a cool blend with some creative ideas – such as the MVA which polices the multiverse and of course the whole ‘energy wave’ which divides up into the surviving Jets in their respective universes.
This movie is as Hollywood standard action as you can get in terms of plot, it’s formulated as a way to create some awesome action scenes and offers little to no meaning in it’s story line – it’s made purely to entertain on a superficial level.
Hence the hard rock music sprinkled over the soundtrack of the movie, it’s there to target an audience of young action fans.
The pace of the movie is fairly constant as each Jet chases and tries to outsmart the other. It’s not a film known for realism but the general concept lends itself very well to hyperactive, wire-fu martial arts action combined with Jet Li’s true abilities as a martial artist.
Of course, the CGI and techniques used to make Jet face off against himself work seamlessly, and a cool fantasy based / effects driven universe is what you get out of this film.
The Action & Martial Arts
This movie has some cool martial arts action which seems to be supplemented by sublte wirework – with the exception being the ‘superhuman’, matrix style movements.
Of course with Jet Li’s Wushu abilities, he’s able to take full advantage of the fantasy based power and rev things up tastefully with wires and editing. We see him performing movements at a crazy speed, performing superhuman feats and even a nice little face off at the superhuman speed – shown in slow motion for cool cinematic effect. But it’s mostly just bells and whistles by this stage.
There is plenty of action and we see a lot of nicely played fighting on a slow mo backdrop to give the illusion of speed. Overall it’s pretty cool.
What I liked from a martial arts perspective is the two opposing styles of Yulaw and Gabe. Yulaw has a ‘straight line’ form of fighting which is very aggressive whilst Gabe utlilizes more passive circular movements. A nice touch for the fan paying attention!
The Verdict?
Just a fun movie with Jet Li fighting himself. There’s nothing super special about this film, it is just a fanatasy / science fiction martial arts film produced purely to make money but at least it’s entertaining.
I liked it, so I recommend it!
On Blu Ray –
Region Free (Any Country)
The One [Blu-ray]
On DVD –
Region 1 (US & Canada)
The One (Special Edition)
Region 2 (UK, Europe, etc)
The One [DVD] [2002]
