The One (2001)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This post spoils movies Timecop (1994) and The One (2001).

The One is Jet Li's Timecop. Both movies have highly regulated technology and someone wants to use it for their own advantage. Both movies have policing agency, whose agents travel between version of worlds. In both movies hero's wife is killer in their bedroom, while hero is outside watching it happen. In both movies hero ends up into world, where the wife is still alive. And most of all both are scifi movies with martial arts actionmovie star in leading role. Plus in both movies, there are two versions of hero. Who ever wrote the script, have seen Timecop. You can find my Timecop posts following Timecop tag.

In Timecop technology was time travelling. In this it is travelling between different universes. There are 125 different universes in multiverse and in everyone, there is different version of you. When one version of you is killed in one universe, his energy is given to other versions of you. There are different hypothesis on what happens, when there is only one version of you. Yulaw is determined to find out the truth. He has killed 123 different versions of him and got extraordinary abilities. There is still one to go, Gabe in universe much like ours. I say much like ours, because in that universe George W. Bush talks about universal healthcare like it is a good thing.

Unlike in Timecop, our hero is not working in agency, that travels between world. This time he is Gabe, regular police officer, who doesn't know anything about multiverse. That role is given to Jason Statham. This is first movie, where Jet Li and Jason Statham are together. Jason Statham is rookie multiversecop hunting Yulaw with his mentor. If multiversecops have to kill Yulaw, they have to kill Gabe too. There can't be only one version of person. How this haven't happen before is quite strange. Are every version of person dying same time, if they are dying on old age? Does the life style change anything? Or is the energy so low at old age, that it doesn't make big change? Movie doesn't bother to explain these questions. It is like same matter can't occupy same space stupidity in Timecop.

Movie doesn't use multiverse as much as it could have used it. It begins in universe where Al Gore won the election. Most of the movie happens in universe where George W. Bush won the election and then there is multiversecop's universe, that is like future world. Some actors play different roles in different universes. But that is almost all we got from multiverse. It is good thing that this technology is made hard to use. You have to be in certain place at certain time, if you want to travel to different universe. Unless you are in multiversecop's universe, where only the time matters.

Ending doesn't make much sense. It was told that there are different hypothesis what happens, when there is only on version of person, The One. Destruction on universe was mentioned and The One becoming god was mentioned. If there are these kinds of possibilities, then why multiversecops sent Yulaw to prison planet, where other inmates wanted to kill him or at least hurt him. They were ready to send Gabe to his universe, where he could have been given life in prison or death sentence for crimes Yulaw did. Multiversecops wanted to sent them to great danger. If other dies, other would become The One. It doesn't make sense that multiversecops sent them to universes where they can't be followed and other one killed when other one dies.