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The One (Special Edition)

The One (Special Edition)

List Price: $14.95
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A recycle bin of old ideas and action sequences.
Review: At an early point in "The One," actor Jet Li is strapped to a steel chair, a transport of some kind, and makes the remark, "The multiverse, every universe in it, is irrational and sloppy." Take away the scientific nature of that statement, and what you have is a perfect description of writer/director James Wong's martial arts actioner, a recycle bin of old ideas and action sequences, turgid characters and ludicrous plotting. In short, it may very well be one of the worst films ever made.

From the very first line, a campy narration that reveals the "multiverse," composed of over one hundred separate universes, I got the feeling that the film had nowhere to go. Seconds later, we're taken to a prison in one of the various universes, where inmate Lawless is being removed from his cell for execution. Played by Jet Li, Lawless is soon gunned down in cold blood by Yulaw, also played by Jet Li. It is here that we learn Yulaw's agenda, hopping from universe to universe, killing his aliases and attaining their strength to become the one and only.

Despite capture efforts on the part of the Multiverse Agency, who fear the imbalance of power as a result of Yulaw's killing spree, our fearless, cocky antihero escapes to yet another universe, carrying two bumbling Agency deputies along for the ride. He plans to seek out and destroy Gabe (once again played by Jet Li), a Los Angeles police officer who loves his veterinary wife and has a dog for a pet (so much for characterizations, huh?).

The film is a classic case of a bad premise made even worse by lack of imagination on the part of its makers. Let's forget for a moment that the plot recycles bits and scraps from various films, recalling such twists as the old "Which one is the good guy?" trick meant to throw us off the track. Not only is such a tactic completely clichéd and overused, but it burdens the film with predictability, lacking even the good sense to at least try to reverse our initial guess.

Even the film's countless scenes of joyless, uninspired action are also to blame. Director Wong seems to have a "Matrix" fetish; if the abundance of bullet-dodging sequences, in which a character quickly ducks out of harm's way while the camera trails with the bullet itself, isn't proof of Hollywood's lack of originality, then nothing ever will be. The martial arts fight sequences will no doubt draw comparison to films like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," but, despite their well-staged appearance, they lack any sort of energy or intensity. Oh, and did I mention the big payoff sequence, a finale with sparks and slow-motion photography that will surely remind younger viewers of the final showdown from Disney's "The Lion King?"

The film's biggest problem is Jet Li himself, who plays a plethora of characters, but can't manage a single worthy performance as any of them. His arrogance and wit in the role of Yulaw are unaffecting and run-of-the-mill, and he seems more focused on those two traits than he does in making this antagonist into a fearsome figure. Since Gabe is little more than a pawn in Yulaw's game of chess, the story gives us little reason to care whether or not he lives or dies. In fact, by film's end, you may find yourself pleading with the writers to just kill them both and end it all.

The good news is, Li looks right at home with the material. The bad news is, this debacle feels about as entertaining as an MRI. "The One" does succeed in inciting us to question the lucidity and good judgment of its characters and writers, whose efforts never rise above juvenile. Martial arts aficionados will undoubtedly embrace the film with such praiseful compliments as "breathtaking" and "eye-popping." Consider it a mercy killing.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Terribly dissapointing
Review: Hey, you know the drill. Every actor/actress has a good movie and then the next one is plain terrible. This movie is a great example. Kiss of the dragon was a great movie, and I enjoyed it a lot. I saw this movie in the theaters hoping to see another action packed Jet Li movie. I was very dissapointed.

To start it off, the plot was pretty good. That is the only reason it is 2 stars and not 1. It is about a bunch of different universes. Every person on the planet has one life in every single universe. One person has an evil idea. He invents a machine that he can travel through the different universes. When he goes through each universe, he kills the person that is living his life there. So, he is just killing his own self, but that person is living in a different universe, so he will not die. Every time you die in a different universe, you get stronger, and this is what the man had in mind. Once he killed this last person, he would become "The One" (chessy isn't it?) He killed every single person in the universes, EXCEPT FOR ONE. The government services devoted to protecting the universal travel decided to get rid of the 2 men left. Something went wrong. Now the government has to stop this man from becoming "The One" so he will not domminate the world.

Yes. Good story. But here are the REALLY bad parts.

First off, the graphics are just like the matrix's graphics. Many spoofs of fighting movies have done this to be funny. We all know a few (i think). Although, these [people] thought they would be attracting people by having good graphics...For the entire movie, they did the camera rotations as the matrix did. FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! IT EVEN STARTED OUT THE SAME!!! Do you know how, in the matrix, trinity is in the room, and then the police chases after her? You know the part when she jumped from builind to building? Ya know what happened in The One? He was in a room. The police found him. He killed the police and ran. While police cars were chasing him, he jumped from one bridge to another part of the road. Wow! It's so original! NOT!!! I can't believe that they would make it a complete copy of the matrix and then just say its the best movie of the year!!!

Lastly, the acting was really bad. I can understand that Jet Li is chinese, and I'm not trying to be racist or mean. But you couldn't understand Jet Li sometimes, and when you did, his voice didn't sound chinese. At one time he said: "No. Are you ready?" It sounded more like: "Nlo. Laare lyoue leady?" It sounds sometimes so dumb it's funny!

So, you read my review. I hope you can now see this movie is not recommended. Only the most HARDCORE fans of Jet Li should even think about getting this movie. Hope this review helps! Peace!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Martial Arts Action
Review: This movie has great martial arts action scenes. The story-line is interesting, but the best parts are the martial arts performances by Li and his "other self". There are also some interesting new visual effects, for example, with the motorcycles, but I don't want to give it away. The dvd has added features, mini-documentaries showing how they did stunts, special effects and martial arts. Recommended.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: It's a little biut of everyhting.
Review: Take one part Highlander, add some timecop, mix in some Sliders, have Jet Li star in it and basically you have the synopsis for the One. Now just because it is a mix of some many different things does not mean it's bad, in fact this is quite entertaining.
Jet Li stars in multiple roles, primarily though he is the good guy cop in our dimension and the crazed serial killer in another. The killer has found a way to get almost immortal by going to each of the 125 alternate dimensions and killing himself in each, thus the life energy is spread to the survivors. It coems down to Jet Li vs Jet Li in a pretty cool fight sequence.
The time cop idea comes in from the fact that in many dimension there is a special police force whose sole purpose is to stop any one form abusing the dimension traveling privilage. Convicted crimnals are sent to one specific dimension that is basically an apocolyptic ruin.
Overall this is really for die hard action fans or Jet Li fans, most people would see this as dull or corny. a shame because this is really an enjoyable film, if you don't take it to seriously.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Movie
Review: I saw this in the theaters when it first came out and thought it was great, I have never really followed Jet Li, but the storyline behind this intrigued me, this is a really good movie, even with the bad acting at times from jason stratham but it's tolerable, very itneresting storyline about alternate universes and alos why he is fighting himself, the fight sequences are awesome as well, I have not listened to the commentary yet, but I do not think it will be all that interesting to lsiten to, there are a few documentaries about the movie which are pretty interesting, i was surprised to learn that it didn't seem liek there was that much blue screen from the documentaries but there was a lot of computer editing, very interesting stuff, if you are a fan of sci fi and of fighting/action movies this is a must have.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Great movie, but what's with the FALSE widesceen?!?
Review: I thought this was the best overall Jet Li movie since he started making movies in the US. I liked this one so much that I wanted the DVD very much. However, I found out that the widescreen feature on this DVD is a rip-off. It's actually the fullscreen version with black bars covering the top and bottom, so in effect you get less of the original film you do when watching "widescreen", than you do when you watch the "fullscreen" version. I've noticed several other DVDs that do this such as "Toy Story 2", and wonder if other people realize this. I also wonder how can DVD publishers get away ripping customers off with fake widescreen DVDs. Something needs to be done so DVD publishers stop ripping off customers this way in order to reduce their own production costs, at the expense of the customer. This really caught my attention here because I really liked this movie and was very disappointed they did this to this movie on DVD. Now I'm hoping for a re-release of this movie on DVD with the true widescreen print shown at the theaters. When DVDs feature both the fullscreen and widescreen version on the same side of one DVD disc, beware that the widescreen may be merely the fullscreen print with top and bottom covered by black bars. Watch the same scene from both versions and compare for yourself...

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: awesome
Review: when you watch a jet li movie you usually watch it for the action sequences, not the acting or the story. This movie may not have the best story or acting but its one of the coolest martial art films out there today!!! The use of bullet time during hand to hand combat fight scenes is sick as hell and jet li makes it even cooler. if you want an awesome fighting movie, the one is for you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent
Review: This is the best Jet Li movie so far. If you liked the Matrix, you will like this. I rented, and liked it so much that I bought the same day. The special effects are fantastic. The martial arts of Jet Li are better than any previous actors. I highly recommend buying the DVD version so you can replay the scenes frame by frame, they did a great job on this one.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not the Best Jet Li, But Still Good.
Review: Although I like Jet Li's older films much better, The One was still great, especially for one of his first major roles in an English speaking film (Romeo Must Die was first, but it was nowhere near as dialog intensive for Jet as The One).

This film could have stood to be a bit longer. Less than an hour and a half long, another 10 or 20 minutes giving a little more depth to the characters would have been nice. What would have been nice is maybe a little bit more of the Multiverse. As the movie stands you only see 5 of the infinate number of universes, it only took Law 2 years to eliminate 123 targets, maybe seeing more than just his last target would have been nice.

All in all a good movie (albeit short), and a must see for anyone as hooked on Jet Li films as I have apparently become over the past few months.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Movie, where's the sequel?
Review: I'm a big fan of movies with "Parallel" universe plots, (sort of like TV, Sliders) and I loved "The One." Jet Li stars as an 'inter-dimensional' agent gone bad, intent on assassinating himself in each reality. In doing so, Jet Li, gets more strength, intelligence and celerity.

Jet Li, also stars as his 'near-earth' counterpart, a police officer, with a great career, friends and a veterinarian wife.

What follows is a typical good guy, versus bad guy movie plot, which culminates in martial arts showdown of epic proportions.

My only, if any criticism of this movie, is I would've liked to have seen more of the 'alternate' realities. The ones we saw were pretty funny (the penal colony dimension, the dimension where Al Gore was president, etc.)It would've made an amusing minor sub plot.

Overall, an excellent piece of work, worthy of multiple viewing.


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