The One (2/10)

[urbanlegend23]

The One

Starring: Jet Li, Jason Staham, Delroy Lindo
Year of Release: 2001
Director: James Wong
My rating: 2/10


The One is urbanlegend23's 3rd worst film of 2001

I enjoyed James Wong’s 2000 movie, Final Destination. It was a clever and enjoyable movie that brought something new to the teen horror genre. His follow up, The One, deserves to be praised. Not because it is good, but because it manages to rip off almost any action movie in the past few years imaginable. These include The 6th Day, The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and many more. I could tell this movie was going to be bad from the start, and I was definitely right. This movie sucked a big one.

Jet Li may be a good martial artist, but he’s a horrible actor. I mean, he could’ve just maybe put in a little facial expression during fight sequences, or tried to put a little more emotion into his character’s actions. The worst performance here is not actually by Li, but by Jason Statham. I couldn’t stand him! His mouth kept moving at odd angles and he tries to be tough and rough and is just really annoying. I had to turn my face away from his performance at times it was so bad.

The script is probably the worst thing about the movie. The movie is never properly concluded and has a boring climax. There are such stupid sequences and scenes, such as the one where Li’s evil side (Yulaw) picks up two motorbikes at the same thing and crushes a person with them. I was laughing so hard that people were staring at me. The man-and-wife theme is never properly brought to life, and there are so many cheesy lines (“I am the one!”) you’ll be fighting not to throw up. Written by James Wong, this story and idea is not only a big, cheap and boring rip-off, but one of the worst stories brought to the screen in 2001. Wong also directed the movie, and he keeps the movie well choreographed and moody.

However, the team goes over the line in trying to be cool. Do we really need every single fight sequence that has to be technical? We get overstylised running-very-fast, backward flips, flying, slow motion kicks and the infamous man-with-two-guns-jumping-across-the-room-and-then-falling-to-a-safe-hiding-place-and-the-movie-goes-back-to-normal-speed. The style of this movie is not cool, it’s very laughable. The movie is just way too over-the-top it hurts. The crew has even tried to add in their own “new” ideas. There are people ripping apart being sucked into holes (that take them into a new universe, haha!) and worst of all, Jet Li’s slow-motion screwing-up face. Ugh.

Overall, this is a cheesy, plastic, uninvolving, stupid, idiotic film with the dumbest ideas of 2001 (maybe except for the hair in Joe Dirt, and the “animal-pox” in The Animal) and wooden characters. Don’t see this movie, it’s – quite simply – a pathetic action film, if it even deserves the title.

GRADE: 2/10

[Fergus]

Well done review urbanlegend23, but this topic will be closed since there is already another one active before you posted your own topic. Here is the link:

http://www.joblo.com/ubb/Forum13/HTML/001354.html