Great Film: The One
Brilliant idea, but very poorly executed and wasted script potential.
I didn't want to write this movie off on the reviews and critics in the
western world, I mean how wrong have they been about Asian cinema that
has now become a staple diet of the Hollywood remake monster? Plus Jet
L is pretty damn cool, and he's made some interesting movies in Asia.
So with an open mind I was surprisingly averaged out by this movie.
There are good points. The story is very clever, using M-Theory as a
base to bring forward the plot that there are multiple universes each
with their own versions of worlds, and most likely you. Each time one
of you is destroyed the rest share the energy and power amongst them.
The idea that someone might try and purposely become the only version
of themselves in all the Universes to find out if they become a God.
There's also Jet Li, and he's not a bad actor and pretty nimble as a
martial artist, plus Jason Statham who is an all round good actor. As
for the special effects, some of them are really cool, a mixing of
bullet time, and slow motion with normal speed, very cool to watch in
places.
The bad points? Well Statham's accent is appalling, and some of the
effects aren't as comparable as others, so it's quite apparent that
money was spent on some of the main shots and not on others that were
probably deemed as too short on screen or they just plain ran out of
budget.
A big sore point for me is the close cropped camera action that
Hollywood has long favoured, something that Jackie Chan has often
talked about. Filming fight scenes close up serves two purpose. It
gives greater emphasis on a single punch or movement, making it look
harder and more real than it really is, and it also hides what is going
on around the camera lens. For example people holding a fake arm or the
face of a stunt double, etc.
What Chan always said was that he tried to open out the camera and show
the audience what was going on, let them see the people fighting
properly rather than a close up of a face and a fist, cutting to
someone falling into frame. Showing the whole picture is more
effective, and it's more impressive.
So the close cropped shots were just more annoying than anything, you
failed to see the impressiveness of Li's fighting skills, and you found
it hard to see some of the action. Slow the cuts down and pan out the
camera Hollywood Directors! The biggest problem was the story though,
despite having such a strong base on which to build, they seemed to
loose the sense of the plot and concentrate on the action scenes. There
are some serious plot building and explanatory moments that are just
totally overlooked and covered in the space of a few sentences, yet
these could have formed some excellent and complex character
development.
It just all held together too weakly, and not enough was made of the
story. All in all, not a great movie and it's potential was badly
spoiled.
Cast
- MVA Agent Harry Roedecker played by Delroy Lindo
- MVA Supervisor played by Steve Rankin
- Gabe Law played by Jet Li
- LAPD Officer Bobby Aldrich played by James Morrison
- Sgt. Siegel played by Dean Norris
- Yates played by Dylan Bruno
- T.K. Law played by Carla Gugino
