The One (2001)

There's a genuinely brilliant idea buried somewhere inside The One. A multiverse action thriller where a man travels between parallel universes killing off alternate versions of himself, absorbing their life force until he becomes an unstoppable god. That's a proper high-concept hook. I want to watch that film. Unfortunately, what I actually watched was this one, and it is a mess.

Let me start with the elephant in the room: Jason Statham. Now, I'm not going to pretend Statham has ever been Daniel Day-Lewis. I know what I'm signing up for when his name is on the poster. But even by his own standards, the performance here is dreadful. He's playing dual roles, the villain and the hero, and the way he differentiates them is essentially "slightly more scowl" versus "slightly less scowl." There's no weight to either character, no sense that these are two different men shaped by different lives across different worlds. It's the same blank stare in two different outfits, and it drags the film down badly when you actually need to care about what's happening.

The action sequences are fine, and I mean that in the most middling sense possible. They're watchable. There are some decent enough punch-ups, and the wire work has a certain early-2000s charm to it. You can see they were going for something kinetic and stylish, and occasionally they get close. But "fine" is about the ceiling, and when the story around them is this thin, even a good fight scene starts to feel like it's just killing time between nothing and nothing.

Then there's the soundtrack. If you were a committed nu-metal devotee in 2001, this thing must have felt like someone made a film specifically for you. Wall-to-wall aggressive guitars and that particular brand of early millennium angst. Personally, it just made the whole experience feel more absurd than it already was. It's the kind of score that thinks it's adding intensity but mostly adds unintentional comedy. I kept half-expecting someone to do a skateboard trick.

And absurd is really the word for The One. It takes its premise completely seriously, which might have worked if the execution matched the ambition. Films can absolutely be silly and brilliant at the same time. But the silliness here isn't charming or self-aware, it's just accidental. The whole thing has this strange earnestness that makes you feel a bit bad for laughing at it, and then you laugh anyway because what else are you going to do.

I keep coming back to the premise because it genuinely deserves a better film around it. The multiverse angle, the idea that murdering your alternate selves makes you superhuman, the philosophical implications of confronting a version of yourself that made different choices, there's real meat there. If you want to see Statham actually deliver in a film that gives him something to work with, I'd point you toward Unleashed, which at least has a story worth investing in emotionally. Here, that potential just sits in the corner while the film runs around being loud and forgettable.

Two stars feels about right, maybe even slightly generous. Half a star for the concept, half a star for the fight scenes doing their job well enough, and the rest is really just goodwill for the fact that it never quite outstays its welcome. It's short, it moves, and when it's over you'll have largely forgotten it. There are worse ways to spend an evening, but there are a lot of better ones too.

Two stars.

Rating: ★★  | Year: 2001  | Watched: 2025-05-15

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

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