The One: A Cinematic Stinkbomb

If you truly cherish your lives, please do not watch the movie, “The One.” For an hour and a half, I suffered through a movie that completely failed to live up to its Matrix-esque hype. Even worse, the stupidity of the movie caused my critical thinking skills to completely falter.

When the credits were rolling, I got up only to see several ushers waking up the other viewers. They also were probably telling them, “You’ll be glad to hear the movie’s over.”

Jet Li is supposed to be this great martial artist- he has already drawn favorable comparisions with the one and the only Bruce Lee- but in this movie, I have honestly seen better and longer fights on “The Jerry Springer Show.”

It was impossible to grasp the objective of this poorly-scripted movie, which was apparently conjured up from an elementary school storytelling project, about a sheriff deputy (played by Jet Li) who fights an alternative version of himself (also played by Jet Li) that grows stronger after each alternative self that he kills (also played none other than Jet Li). Confused yet? Don’t feel bad- at least it is concise that you don’t have to waste six dollars to see this movie.

Sadly, there were a grand total of two fight scenes in the entire movie- they also were the only decent segments. The opening scene shows Jet Li (the alternative one) employing some serious roundhouse kicks and easily beating approximately seven “universe soldiers” in slow motion while he, himself moves at a normal pace. It might sound strange but it was a rather neat sequence of punches and kicks that caused the young, hip crowd in the theater to holler their approval for a few seconds. Unfortunately, 20 minutes later, these hollers grew into drained yawns as rustling sounds emerged.

The other fight scene occurs in the latter portion of the film. In what was supposed to be billed as the clash of the galaxic titans, Jet Li versus his alternative self was just as exciting as the Westminister Dog Show.

That’s it. As far as the mindless space between both opening and concluding fight goes, it was as if I was reading the first chapter of a classical novel and then slowly leafed through 200 pages of blank pages until the last chapter finally embedded its way in. Point is, don’t hold your breath for a ripple in the monotonic plot.

Jet Li, while he does contain extraordinary martial arts skills, needs to retake several English-speaking classes… it was annoying to listen to his broken vernacular as he awkwardly tried to smoothly mesh his characters along the one-dimensional storyline.

Unfortunately, his humor fared no better. Whenever he’d make an obviously sarcastic remark, everyone cringed, and during the ninth time I checked my watch, I realized that I actually do chuckle more often during the episode of the Larry King Show where he interviewed Ted Koppel than I did during “The One.”

Is it possible for anyone to enjoy this movie? Yes and no. You’ll appreciate the brief wizardry of special effects employed during both fight scenes but if you are looking to become fully absorbed in a maligned storyline or looking for a flick as cunning as the “Thomas Crown Affair”, you won’t be the only one disgruntled.


Recommended:
No

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12