The fisher king goes west (1/4/02)
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The One. [James Wong, 2001.]
The evil twin raised nearly to the seventh power: in a network of, I guess, 124 parallel universes [with cute names like “Hades”] connected by wormholes, which flicker in and out of existence according to some kind of cosmic subway schedule [and don’t simply teleport the transportees away a la
Star Trek, but shred them and carry them off as dancing dustmotes on tubes of ethereal light], supreme badass Jet Li has somehow figured out that if he kills all his alternative selves, he will absorb their energies and attain godlike power [making this I guess the Saul Kripke rewrite of
Highlander]; and, having carried this program far enough that he’s eliminated 122 out of his 123 doppelgängers [and is now faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound — i.e., slightly more impressive than our hero is in real life], enters the Los Angeles of the near future to whack the last remaining Jet — a painfully nice cop who looks good in LAPD shock-troop gear and has a really sweet veterinarian wife who mends unhappy ailing puppies. Since the good Jet has also inherited a lot of the liberated energy, the task isn’t trivial; but any mere mortals who stand in the way don’t stand much of a chance, the two universal paracops [Delroy Lindo and Jason Statham] who show up in pursuit included. Naturally this sets up a bunch of chases down the freeways, over the rooftops, through the hospital, and, finally, into the industry-standard chemical plant for the final dustup. [Someday I am going to figure out why every action movie has to wind up in a chemical plant. Maybe they rent cheap.]
Though the fight choreography [by Corey Yuen] is excellent, and the concept, however shaky, is nowhere near as bad as that of, say,
Demolition Man, still there’s something very very tired about the whole electricbluelit leather-and-bulletproof-vest thing, and the plot is incredibly dumb, even by these standards. Occasionally you get a glimpse of what the Wachowski brothers might have done if they’d managed to write Jet into
The Matrix [of course, they may yet], and it comes somehow as a relief that Bad Jet suffers not obliteration but exile at the denouement. On the other hand it is incredible that save for one or two [mishandled] moments of confusion the authors fail to exploit the wellworn suspense cliches of mistaken identity; can’t anybody here play this game?
But mainly I look at this and can’t believe they missed the opportunity to do a scifi kungfu version of
Kind Hearts And Coronets, with Jet whacking everyone in his extended interdimensional family [young, old, gay, straight, male, female, etc.] standing between himself and the peerage. As always, Hollywood doesn’t know when it has a comedy on its hands.
____________Sade but true (12/31/01)
