Product Description

The evil Yulaw travels to parallel universes, killing off alternate versions of himself and gaining incredible power by acquiring each victim's strength, speed, and intelligence.
Genre: Science Fiction
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 1-JUN-2004
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18916 in DVD
• Brand: LI,JET
• Released on: 2002-03-05
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, French, Georgian, Chinese, Thai
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 87 minutes

Amazon.com
The One sets a martial arts milestone by pitting action star Jet Li against his greatest enemy: himself. This sci-fi thriller establishes a "multiverse" consisting of countless parallel universes, each populated by variants of every individual. Li plays a renegade from the Multiverse Agency, illegally traveling through "quantum tunnels" to eliminate all versions of himself until only two remain, each sharing the cumulative strength of their "parallel universe versions." This mumbo-jumbo inspires a variety of dazzling special effects, and director James Wong (with cowriter and fellow X-Files alumnus Glen Morgan) injects clever humor into the Matrix-derivative premise. Carla Gugino is wasted as the "good" Li's obligatory love interest, but The One will appeal to action fans with its fast-paced pursuit between the evil Li and two agents (Delroy Lindo, Jason Statham) assigned to stop his trans-universal killing spree. It's a one-gimmick movie, best enjoyed with your brain in neutral. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
The "X-Files" alumnus James Wong and his partner Glen Morgan concoct a pointless martial-arts film for Jet Li that even the Rock wouldn't touch. (He backed out to do a prequel to "The Mummy Returns.") Li's considerable acrobatic skills are hampered by the overdone computer-generated effects-his performance is humorless and stunt-driven. The screenplay is some gobbledygook about parallel worlds that lacks the imagination Wong and Morgan brought to their previous movie, "Final Destination." -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

GREAT ACTION MOVIE!
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.

Jet Li's best american film to date
The one is a very innovative action movie. The slow mo an fast paced action sequences were very cool. The movie has a somewhat involved plot that the filmakers rush too quickly through just to get to the action. I feel that Jet Li is a wonderful actor, his english has improved with each American film that he has made. One great thing to see is that he finally has a love interest. He still has never kissed a woman in any movie I have seen. To people who have seem Jet in Asian movies like myself there still seems to be something missing in his american movies. If you have not really seen Jet Li before this movie should peek your interest. The film is good and I recomend it but how can any Jet li film live up to past masterpieces like Fist of Legend, fong sai yuk, or the Once upon a time in China series. Go see this movie just for the end sequence where each Jet Li fights with different kung fu styles. It is nice to see Martial arts done by a Martial artist.

A pretty, dumb (or pretty dumb) movie
Based on the trailers for this movie, I went in expecting some fun fight scenes between Jet Li and Jet Li, some cool special effects, and a decent performance from the always-charming Carla Gugino. And my expectations were met. The fight scenes were pretty exciting. There were good performances from Jet Li and Carla Gugino, although I'm sure she'd prefer to point out that the much better, much more successful Spy Kids is also on her resume. It was also nice seeing appearances from members of the cast of writers/producers/director Morgan and Wong's TV series Space: Above and Beyond in supporting roles. And Delroy Lindo should thank Samuel L. Jackson every morning that he's gotten too big to appear in movies like these, since Lindo seems to have made his recent career out of Jackson leftovers.

On the other hand, the story isn't very smart. The screenplay is credited to Morgan and Wong, who wrote some of the X-Files best episodes, produced the aforementioned (and underrated) Space: Above and Beyond, and crafted a surprisingly spooky big-screen debut with Final Destination. Credits aside, viewers will find very little evidence that anyone actually wrote this movie (and anyone who did shouldn't go around admitting it in public). Another particularly annoying point is Lindo's (and later Li's) sidekick, speaking stock tough-guy lines in such an over-the-top growl, he's even more of a cartoon character than everyone else in the film.

Still, as the end credits rolled, I went through my mental checklist. Cool fight scenes: check. Cool effects: check. Jet Li and Carla Gugino, still emminently watchable: check. So I got what I came for. Pity it wasn't wrapped up inside a better, smarter story.