Subject: Review: One, The (2001)

From: Ram Samudrala <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 20:12:51 -0000

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The One
http://www.ram.org/ramblings/movies/the_one.html

Borrowing from the Many Worlds interpretation of Everett's
Relative-State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics, /The One/ showcases
a scenario of what happens when events in these different universes
become intertwined.

The setting for this plot is a "multiverse" consisting of many
parallel universes (using the Everett interpretation, there are an
infinite number).  The first Universes that discovered this "fact"
went about creating a police force to ensure no abuse occurs by
travelling from Universe to another through "Quantum wormholes".
Yulaw (Jet Li) is a former officer in this force who discovers that
his strength increases when he kills a version of himself from another
Universe. He then goes about killing the 123 copies of himself that
are known to exist and their strengths flow to him and his one
remaining counterpart, Gabe (Li again), in the 124th Universe
(arguably there are more than 125 Universes, but a Yulaw-like
personality does not exist in them).

Gabe, a regular cop in a Universe similar to ours, is unable to
explain his sudden increase in strength. That is until Yulaw comes
after him. Aided by two of the Multiverse police, Roedecker (Delroy
Lindo) and Funsch (Jason Statham), Gabe must stop Yulaw before Yulaw
becomes "the one" standing, which would allow him to gain an enormous
amount of power and rule the Multiverse as a despotic god.

The idea that as one person is killed in a given Universe, his
strength flows to all his other counterparts in different Universes,
is an interesting one. The corollary is that all the counterparts of a
given individual follow some Zen-like equivalent of the First Law of
Theromodynamics (that their strengths are conserved). That also is the
flaw in the idea driving the film: why make a distinction that limits
strengths to individuals? Why not atoms or molecules?  If the
strengths holding together the atoms that compromise an individual
were distributed to all atoms in all Universes when that individual
died, then assuming an approximately equal number of births and
deaths, no one would notice anything. (Presumably also, in the natural
order of things in this film's Multiverse, a counterpart would be born
every time one dies to ensure there is a balance.)

When I saw the previews for this film, I thought that watching Jet Li
fight with himself should be simply amazing. But it wasn't. The movie
is interesting for the ideas it brings up, but there is very little of
Jet Li's martial arts prowess on display here. The film is fast-paced
and by the time the basic elements of the plot are set up, there's
little time for fight sequences.

The soundtrack for the film is very good. The joke of Al Gore as
U.S. President in one Universe was topped by George W. Bush proposing
universal health care in another.  /The One/ is a great film to watch
on the big screen, especially if you happen to like mostly brainless
action.

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