 When random people approach me on the streets and say, Adam, what is cinema to you? I look at them and say, please don't talk to me. I'm better than you are. But then I also respond with Jet Lee's The One. Much like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Double Impact, Jet Lee has to face his toughest rivalry yet. Himself. Make no mistake, The One is a pretty bad movie. It's dumb all across the board. Yet, it has an almost bad, it's good charm to it. I can't turn away from, and I revisit this every once in a while for both a good laugh and to just kind of be entranced by everything happening in this film. If you thought the multiverse was a new concept, oh man, this film was doing it way ahead of the Marvel game. Maybe not the comics, but the movie was. I love when a movie takes a straightforward concept and throws it in a crazy situation. In this case, it's Jet Lee, jumping to different universes and killing variants of himself in order to become the ultimate being, the most powerful, the most God-like, The One. I also love when movies say their own title, and this one does that as well. Jet Lee can be heard saying, I am The One, or I will be The One multiple times. I eat it up, love it. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. The visionary mind behind bringing this to the silver screen is none other than James Wong, the legendary filmmaker behind Dragon Ball Evolution. Delroy, Lindo, and Jason Statham are both in this as time cops. They can jump to the different dimensions using a convoluted watch system thingy-ma-bobber. I don't know, it's a bracelet or something. It does the trick. These characters have names, but I don't care. Gabe, I think, is the good version? It's just Jet Lee. That's all you need. The movie's like an hour and 20 minutes long. It has zero interest in diving far into the psyche of these characters or slowly playing this thing out like The Matrix, which came out just before this movie. Clear inspiration was taken. It has about the same runtime as Men in Black, and I'm thankful for that. They don't waste their time getting to things. I just want to see some action, want some cool music, want some cool effects. This gives you a little bit of all of that. I mean, it gives you a lot of it, but most of it's not very good. All of it is 100% entertaining, though. Since this movie came out in the 90s, it's a requirement to have a hot female in there. This is no exception. Carla Gugino's here playing the love interest. It works. It does the trick. She's not annoying, she's used properly, and then we get rid of her when the story says we should. I rewatched this with my 10-year-old son who loved the living hell out of it. He thought it was better than The Matrix, because of course he did. It's super fast. There's tons of stupid nonsensical action, and there's hard rock music just thrown in, just barfed out whenever the mood strikes the director, and it's poorly utilized, too. God's smack or corn or some random thing will come out, and it will be like a mid-song, and it will just harsh cut. No fade-out, really. No build-up. It's just there, like, ah! Stand alone! And Jetly's beating guys up in slow-mo speed-ups, which is the best part about this. We got Jetly, hidden dudes with CG bikes, punching guys who suspend in the air while he kicks another dude, and then thrust punches a third. I love it all. The film does blow its load early with one of the cooler sequences where some SWAT team members are in a parking garage. Evil Jetly comes out, takes out a handful of them. He's like... Pshh! Guy suspends. Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Mwah! Pshh! Dude's got the gun. Pshh! Pshh! And the film's really touted as a cage match, where it's Jetly versus Jetly, and it doesn't disappoint. The final 20 minutes is an epic battle that actually goes a lot longer than I originally recall it going. They fight in a warehouse. There's sparks that come down in slow motion while they're attacking. At one point he grabs an axe and throws it, catches it. Pshh! Pshh! That stuff's pretty awesome, and they do a good job with the body doubles. I didn't even notice when he's not there and when he is. Although it is Jetly, so it's possible he really did somehow split himself into two for this film. I wouldn't put it past him. If nothing else, watch this for the final moments of the film where Evil Jetly is transported to the underworld dimension, AKA hell, and he's fighting atop a pyramid. Different bad guys yelling, I am the one! And he's just kicking dudes and the music's blasting and the camera slowly zooms back as you see just chaos and anarchy raining around him. And then boom! The title comes up and we're ready to go play some paintball and have some pizza afterwards. It's a good time. Again, this is not a good movie, but it's a fun watch. It's something you can easily put on while you're having a long lunch break or something and just get it done. There's actually some pretty sweet effects work and for the most part, it holds up pretty well. The music, no, that's embarrassing. That's the kind of shit I made when I was in high school with my buddies. We'd use some copyright songs, spackle it on top. It would make no sense in the sequence, but it's there and it's cool and we like it. So there it works. I'm a big fan of Jetly playing villains. He was great in Lethal Weapon 4. He works well here. I like the dynamic between the two versions of himself, battling it out. Good versus evil. Day versus night. It's the greatest matchup in the history of the world. Lex Luthor Jr. had it wrong. It's not Superman versus Batman. It's this freaking Jetly versus Jet Lee. So those are my thoughts on the one. Do you remember this film? Do you have good memories? Let me know in the comments below if you liked it. Feel free to subscribe to the channel. I post tons of movie and TV show related content here all the time. Would love to have you stick around. Make sure you hit the notification bell if you are a member so they show up in your feed. And hopefully I'll see you soon. ["Dick Through the Ditches and Burn"] Dick through the ditches and burn through the witches and slam in the back of my drag you laugh. Cause this is what it's like in the world's collide. Ooh, ah, ah, ah, ah. You know your monkey down with the sickness. Your motherfucker, your monkey down with the sickness. Let the body sit the floor. Let the body sit the floor.