Long before numerous comic book franchises bet their box office on plundering the multiverse for ever more outlandish story ideas, we had The One: an action/sci-fi that was sort of part Timecop and part Highlander. Deployed in the twin effort to continue pushing the limber talents of martial arts superstar to the US in the wake of Lethal Weapon 4 and Romeo Must Die and take advance of the sci-fi martial arts craze kickstarter by The Matrix, The One utilised its funky premise to see Li come face to face with his ultimate opponent: himself.
However, while as stupidly awesome as that sounds, what we actually got was nowhere near as cool as the nifty concept would allow you to believe and in the years since, the film has drifted into the realms of the forgotten, going from The One, to the none without anyone seeming to notice. But after an overdue rewatch, does James Wong and Glen Morgan’s reality hopping epic jump the shark as it leaps across universes?
One way to find out.
Multidimensional travel is not only possible, but it’s also policeable as the MultiVerse Authority does it very best to stop any wrongdoers using universe traversing wormholes in order for their own gains. One of these power hungry people is Gabriel Yulaw, an ex-MVA agent who has gone mad with God-like ambition after discovering that if you kill a version of yourself in another universe, all their life energies are transferred to the remaining versions, making them fast, stronger and more agile with every subsequent death.
From there, Yulaw has been bouncing all across the multiverse, killing every single version of himself he can find in an attempt to be superhuman and we pick up with the guy just as he takes out the 123rd version of himself, a hardened criminal named Lawless. On his tail are two MVA agents, the veteran Roedecker and the rookie Funsch, who hope they can capture him and deliver him to the rather delightful sounding Stygian penal colony located in the Hades Universe. However, finding themselves eventually overwhelmed by their superior foe, all three find themselves zapped to the Charis universe where Yulaw’s final target awaits.
This final version of himself is the thoroughly decent Gabe Law, a deputy sheriff working for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, who has been noticing his strength and agility gradually increasing as Yulaw went about his dastardly work, but while Gabe is very obviously the good guy, MVA rules dictate that because both men are incredibly powerful, both should be marked as a threat. The other issue is that no one really knows what will happen if either Gabe or Yulaw manages to kill the other. The winner may become the most powerful being in the multiverse, or all of reality as we know it may end in an instant – something that becomes a major concern once Yulaw targets Gabe’s loved ones.
Despite being admirably ambitious and containing flashes of genuine brilliance, The One is one of those action movies that popped up throughout the 2000s that ultimately were as empty as a Halloween pumpkin during a candle shortage. While there was flashy brawls and random flashes of CGI aplenty, the team of Wong and Morgan seemingly have no idea which tone to settle on as they try and spoon feed a complicated scenario among scenes of Jet Li launching himself at his evil double like a parakeet attacking a mirror. What the filmmakers settled on was kind of a colourful, comic book tone that gave us the occasional quirky set piece at the expense of making the audience give even the remotest of shits.
It’s a real shame, because before they started making painfully mediocre blockbusters like the Black Christmas remake or the hideously bad Dragonball: Evolution, they not only cut their teeth on legendary paranoia marathon, The X-Files, but they kick started a genuine horror phenomenon in the form of Final Destination. As it happens, the fact that the team of Wong and Morgan managed to get the ever shifting rules of that particular horror franchise over so clearly made me think that they’d pull off a similar trick with the Multiverse, but while they kind of pull it of with the aid of photos of Li wearing various ridiculous wigs to separate the different variations of the main character, they forgot to give any one of them an actual personality. While there’s no one you’d want more engaging in super-complicated martial arts while being hailed up into the air on wires, I truly don’t think there’s a variation of Yulaw that exists that Jet Li wouldn’t be miscast as. Usually cast as more the thoughtful, determined type, as Gabe Law he’s a caring charisma vacuum who can punch and kick real good and as Yulaw he’s… sort of the same, but – you know – meaner. Having a hero who is boring is survivable, having a villain who is also deeply uninteresting is a bit worrying, but when your boring good and bad guys are played by the same actor, you’ve got a hell of a problem that no amount of funky choreography is going to fix.
As a result, the supporting cast work hard to paper over the gaps, with Delroy Lindo and a pre-action heavyweight Jason Statham running around yelling out all the complicated exposition that Li’s thick accent is too strong to deliver. To be fair both look like they’re having a good time, even if Statham has to balance his performance with a buzz cut and an American accent that both fight each other for the honor of being the most unwieldy. Also paying her sci-fi dues is Carla Gugino who has the thankless task of playing the loving wife/damsel role, even if the scenes between herself and Li feel like the two only met fifteen minutes earlier.
So that leaves the action scenes to carry the day, and while the film has some awesome, Matrix-style, fighting effects (and opening brawl that sees Yulaw fighting a bunch of cops by moving at a completely different speed to them has now been done to death everytime a comic book movie contains someone with super speed, but here, it’s stunningly original. However, while the entire movie has seemingly been sold on the fact that we’re going to watch Jet Li fight himself, it doesn’t prove to be as exciting as that 12 year old voice at the back of your brain obviously thinks it will, with the final showdown seeing the legendary actor awkwardly fight a stunt double with some digital tinkering.
At barely 90 minutes, it’s almost impossible for The One to outstay its welcome and it finishes on a killer shot, but if the film hadn’t been so ruthlessly targeted at edgy teens (Disturbed, Drowning Pool and Papa Roach are all over the soundtrack like heroes on a lip), and carried a bit more emotional heft, it might have not been the action equivalent of a light snack before dinner.
“There can only be one.” states Yulaw at one point, brazenly riffing off of Highlander. I’d personally argue that The One, is one too many…
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