It seem like at some point in every action star's career, he's required to fight himself. I'm not talking that spiritual bullshit about facing your inner demons or questioning your gender, I'm talking about actually trading fists with your mirror image. Bruce Campbell did it in Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, Arnold Schwarzenegger kinda did it in The Sixth Day, Jean-Claude VanDickburger's done it a few times, and The Rock was supposed to do it in The One. But, the man whose tax forms say "Dwayne Johnson" opted out of the project so he could do The Scorpion King. As such, Jet Li was brought in to star and therefore he would become The One... to fight his evil self in a bloody battle of artificial twins that hasn't been seen since the original ending to The Parent Trap hit the editing room floor in favor of a more family friendly version without all the torture porn and dual eviscerations.
According to an opening narration by a guy whose voice bears a striking auditory resemblance to every sci-fi geeks friend Big Billy Shatner, there are an infinite number of alternate parallel universes that exist right next door to each other, hence the term "parallel". Actually, for the sake of this movie, the number of universes is finite (and named after various Gods like Hades and yours truly), otherwise the movie would just go on and on forever. In each of these universes lives a different version of ourselves, like an Al Gore who wasn't screwed out of his presidency, a Tom Selleck who never got rid of his mustache, or a Michael Jackson who stayed black. One of these dimensions has discovered a way of portal jumping between said alternate realities via black holes, and it's that dimension's Jet Li (under the name Gabriel Yulaw) who decides to use the portals (via his official Mickey Mouse digital watch combination portable portal opener) for the purpose of hopping to these other planes of existence and killing his other selves so he can gain their power for his own and eventually become a God himself... or cause the whole of existence to implode in on itself, whichever comes first.
Given that Jet Li's likely to kick your ass in any dimension, you can imagine what packing 123 more of them into one Jet Li's body is like: super fast, super strong, super agile, and packed with enough kung-fu skill to kill ten men with his big toe. To make things harder for Yulaw, he's being chased across these dimensional rifts by former timecop portal police buddy Roedecker (Delroy Lindo!) and R's new partner Funsch (Jason Statham!) who are responsible for bringing Yulaw's ass back to his own dimension to stand trial for crimes against the dimensional fabric. As you can imagine, his next stop is our dimension, where Jet Li is Gabe Law, the last of the 125 Jet Lis, an exemplary police officer(what else do you expect from a guy with the last name "Law"?), and general nice guy. Throw in a cinematic love interest, a case of mistaken identity, a few futuristic guns, a lot of CGI and wire-fu, and the post-Matrix industry standard of "bullet time" combat, and you've got your basic "run and gun" with touches of the Sci-Fi Channel tossed in to make it interesting.
It's actually kinda cool that Jet Li's alter egos in this movie each use a different form of martial arts. Granted, for your average Joe Shmoe (like myself) who doesn't know the first thing about beating someone's ass in anything resembling a "style" (unless "Lumbering Oaf" is considered a style), this is pointless to the viewer, but I still think it's kinda cool... as I've said twice now. Sorry, must be getting wrapped up in the whole duality theme. One thing that's gets less and less cool to more my ears are subjected to it though is Jet Li's accent. Oye, as if listening to him attempt to speak English wasn't hard enough, now we get to sit through it twice as much... Sadly, Jason Statham's words are almost as hard to suffer. It's too bad that we're denied more of Delroy Lindo than what we're given. Oh yeah, and speaking of audio assault with an irritating weapon, the movie's soundtrack is littered with bad pop-metal crap like Top 20 (s)hits from guys like Drowning Pool, Disturbed, Popa Roach, and yes, even Tony Orlando & Dawn... don't ask. As if that weren't enough to make you turn your head and cough, the CGI isn't exactly great and anyone who knows me knows my motto: if you can't do CGI right, don't bother doing it at all.
Directed by Final Destination's James Wong, so if nothing else you've got the potential for huge "chain reaction" fight scenes. You see, that’s where the difference between “potential” and “actual” comes in. Though we do get a fairly elaborate one for our finale, complete with explosions, showers of sparks and a fire axe, the rest of the "action" doesn't quite satisfy. The scene where evil Jet beats up a pair of motorcycle cops with their own bikes could've been awesome if not for the big ugly CGI bikes. Also, did I miss the part where they explain how it is that Law gradually gets as powerful as Yulaw without having to kill 123 of his other selves, or is this just some plot hole cop out (no pun intended) to make the fight interesting? Whatever the case, The One is too complex to satisfy your basic mono-chromosome action junkie stereotype and has way too much CGI and wire-fu to give your standard kung-fu connoisseur much of a boner. It doesn’t quite know which audience it’s trying to appeal to, and therefore feels like it struggles with a split-personality as it tries to make everybody happy while at the same time alienating everyone. Did that make sense? Yeah, now you know how I felt watching the movie… As such, The One gets a two. Number humor. Great.
