The One (Special Edition)

Rating:
Summary: The beginning of an era.
Review: I am excited to say that Jet Li is doing very well in his films. He seems to understand that the power of Ba Gua is indeed very strong. He brings that to the movies. Other martial art films don't even know what Ba Gua is.

Now, I must also say that I've had about six months training in the art of Ba Gua and I'm in the process of pursuing further studies.

Like my old kung fu teacher told me a few years past, "Ba Gua is number one in China". And that is all I needed to hear.

This movie compares the two arts of Ba Gua and Xing Yi. The Ba Gua art wins. I think that to understand why this is one has to study the martial arts for a while.

My teacher also taught his son, which won a lot of awards, this art of Xing Yi. He also taught an american the art of Ba gua, and it won this student a national Chinese martial art award.

It seems as though the art is the best, but it is also necessary to find the right teacher. Without this, one is wasting many hours of time.

-Calvin

Rating:
Summary: B movie at best
Review: Yes, don't deny it...It's a "B" movie. Story had some interest, but was completely crapped over by the worst of acting. Clichés from start to finish. And the awful nu-metal tracks...(vomits in paper bag) Looking back in 5 years, you'll realize how this (less-than) music will have dated the film. I'm sure jocks all over eat it up, though.

So basically:
-stale to forced acting
-ok story line
-mediocre fight scenes
-corny music
-cheesy special effects...beyond a doubt

Yeah, this was a real cheese-fest. The likes of which had the feel of a USA network world premier.

Jet li, you've really fallen from grace. Give me "Once upon a time in China" any day. Hope "Hero" is exactly that for you.


Rating:
Summary: GREAT ACTION MOVIE!
Review: The One is a true "man's" action movie, full of fighting which is made better by the great heavy metal music selections. This movie starts out fast and rarely lets up, pitting the baddest martial arts action hero in movies against himself, it's great! Other reviewers are right, there could be a better story line, but with all of that action and one of the best endings in action movie history, story line is secondary.

Rating:
Summary: yay! Explosions!
Review: I watched this movie in theatres and once I saw a room explode and heavy metal music blared in creative places matching with the visuals, I decided it was undoubtedly the best movie I had ever seen. What choice did I have, right? Three years later, I stumble upon it again on primetime FX and, in shock, I realize I am viewing perhaps one of the worst films ever to grace US theares, topped only by perhaps the remake of "Planet of the apes".

Jet Li "acts" as a (what else?) cop in this horrible attempt at a copy of "the matrix". The main idea behind this awful film is that there are hundreds of "alternate universes" to every universe, and for every person in a universe there is another person who looks just like you with the same name in every alternate universe. So, if one person decides to kill all of his "look alikes" he will be giving super-human-kung-fu-action-powers. It makes perfect sense, right? If your twins are dead then you OBVIOUSLY get to know kung fu.

And I suppose that's where jet li comes in. His look alike decided to attempt this particular feet and now poor lil' Li is the only one between his clone and god like karate-chop-abilities.

And you thought that was it?

Well, yeah, you were right. Besides the predictable plot, you're left with clumsy special effects, terribly obvious stunt men when the two Jet Li's are in the same scene, and enormous, gaping, plot holes.

So, if you want my advice (Which you better, if you stuck through this whole review) I would reccommend sticking various appendiges in waffle irons before seeing this movie.





Rating:
Summary: Pros: Action,plot Cons: Acting,depth
Review: The movie in my opinion has one of the best opening scenes I've seen for an action movie. The movie got off to a fine start but pretty much drags on until the explosive finish.

I'm not sure why some people complain that it uses matrix-style effects to achieve some of the fights. There are many movies out there that set a new standard of various elements such as action, music, budgets etc. and I am actually surprised that not more movies use the matrix 'bullet-time' approach in their scenes. They needed something to show off Jet Li's inhuman speed and the 'bullet-time' approach was appropriate for it (you wouldn't want him to fight in 'fast-forward' mode would you?).

The main soundtrack of the movie is composed by Hans Zimmer who has quite a fine reputation for doing action movie soundtracks (Black Rain, The Rock, etc). The plot of the movie is original and has a lot of potential going for it. It was also a huge opportunity for Jet Li to really flesh out his acting. Which is unfortunate because this is where the movie fails to deliver. This is a plot of Highlanderesque proportions that demands longer running time! More time should have been spent developing the characters such as Yulaw and his ex-partner, showing Yulaw when he was still a cop and his eventual abomination.

Some of the story demands better acting skills, such as Jet Li dealing with the death of his wife. There is also almost no time given in the movie to show the extent of Gabriel's grief. It's not entirely Jet Li's fault; English is not his main language and he has had very little experience playing in American movies central characters who are Asian-american.

Finally, I think they could have focused on more than 1 universe (or multiverse). Imagine that one universe had a wise and skilled Jet Li who was a tibetian monk in the Himalayas; who sensed the possibility of more than one of his existences; Who knew that his destiny to fight a great enemy was drawing near and spent his days preparing for it. Then halfway through the movie we would see an epic fight between him and Yulaw, but through some deceiving and evil tactic, Yulaw gains the upper hand and murders him. Better yet, we don't know who wins, and later on it turns out that Yulaw was actually killed by the monk, but the monk himself, after beating Yulaw and 'absorbing' some of his powers and knowledge, turns to evil himself and decides to masquerade as Yulaw.

We can only hope that in another universe, such a movie exists. =)