November 29, 2001
Movie Review: The One
Let's say you get one of the world's best martial arts superstars to star in your big-budget movie. Do you think the best course of action would be to put him in lots of amazing martial arts fighting sequences, or to put him in lots of effects-driven action sequences? If you picked the effects sequences, you might be OK with this movie. I would have picked the martial arts sequences, so I was disappointed. Don't get me wrong - Jet Li does a lot of martial arts fighting in this movie, the problem is that he is often fighting against himself, which means he isn't in a real fight, he is in an effects sequence. And it really limits the camerawork that can be done if you can't look at both fighters simultaneously. Sigh. Didn't we learn from the Jean-Claude van Damme movie where he played two people? I actually liked Kiss of the Dragon more than this.
And, there are serious problems with the concept. Why do only murders result in the energy transference, and only when done by the same person from a different universe? It makes no sense. And that would be fine if it were fun to watch, but it wasn't.
After watching this movie, the group I was with decided to go watch a good Jet Li movie to try to remove the taste of this film from out mouths. That's not a good sign.
Posted by babar at November 29, 2001 12:16 AM