Movie Review: The One (2001)

"Oi, this is me new iPhone? Roight, Raymond. Bloody children's toy, it is.
On your bike, mate."

The One is an unassailable algorithm; it's mathematical martial arts aesthetics. Everything here, in all of its breezy 80 minutes, appeals to the senses, unfiltered. In an admirable conflation of the sci-fi and kung fu genres, The One mixes equal parts wushu, special effects, slow-mo, wirework, laser blasters, muddled Nietzschian philosophy, Jason Statham. This is how the story goes: instead of a single universe, there's a "multiverse," comprised of mirror worlds and mirror selves, and wouldn't you know it, an evil Jet Li named Yu Law, finds out that killing his mostly wholesome multiverse counterparts increases his strength. We join the story in progress as Evil Jet murders another of his counterparts, leaving only Gabe Law, a duty-minded police officer played by Jet, as the penultimate Jet. Two multiverse agents, one played by the inimitable Jason Statham, are then tasked with preventing Yu Law from completing his mission. There's plenty of gratuitous special effects on display here, but unlike some other martial arts films, they augment the physical abilities of Li instead of replacing them. Smartly, Li gives his Yu/Gabe Law characters divergent fighting styles to match their respective moral outlooks, and this becomes important during the climatic sequence. Most importantly, it's a visual extension of the thematic content, embodied rather than merely spoken, and the fights gain so much in legibility and genre specificity because of this. The action sequences are clean, and the purely physical stunts are well-integrated with the CGI. As previously mentioned, the final fight sequence between the dueling Jets is a wonderful conflation of traditional wushu choreography and special effects. Other highlights include a superb late-90s/early aughts soundtrack, including many of my pubescent favorites like Papa Roach. It's also worth noting that this was something of an early milestone in the career of Jason Statham; indeed, this was most likely our proper introduction to him. He's unquestionably foregrounded in this film, particularly near the end, and he lays out nearly all his quirks rather quickly. For many reasons, including purely personal, purely nostalgic ones, The One has earned a rightful place in the Code Redd Net canon.