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Bulletproof Monk takes a tried-and-true plot, adds some thoroughly tested action moves and ends up with a mess.
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 17, 2003
Let's hope that when The Matrix Reloaded debuts next month, filmmakers will discover a few fresh fight moves to recycle for a while. The slow-motion bullets and gravity-defying martial arts routine is getting stale. Or, in the case of Bulletproof Monk, getting crusty.
If it's Thursday, it must be time for another run-of-the-thrill action flick pairing cultural opposites in some kind of sacred quest. Based on an underground comic book trilogy, Bulletproof Monk has the ancient Scroll of the Ultimate to protect because whoever reads it attains the power to turn the world into paradise or, more likely, hell. Please don't say we can expect Bulletproof Monk 2 and 3.
Chow Yun-Fat, looking like his name should be Chow-Down, plays the title character, a Tibetan Buddhist monk who doesn't mind dropping the nonviolence principle and picking up a couple of guns. That's all you need to know about the spiritual forces at work in Paul Hunter's film. The drama's reliance upon subway punks, Nazis and the Russian mafia is a clue to the story's unimaginative structure.
The monk has no name, like in a Clint Eastwood Eastern, and 60 years to guard that scroll. He took the assignment in 1943 when the Nazis who weren't racing Indiana Jones to the Holy Grail apparently were trying to grab the scroll. Now it's 2003, and the monk needs a successor. Does he go to a monastery to find someone with the same training that served him and his master (who isn't bulletproof) so well?
No, he winds up in Toronto and Vancouver (trying to pass as a U.S. metropolis), where a brash pickpocket and theater projectionist named Kar (Seann William Scott) has learned martial arts from obscure kung fu movies. Kar has no morals, no ethics and no fight moves that work at the right time. He's perfect for the job. Yeah, right.
The plot lurches from one brawl to the next, alternately interrupted by the monk's fortune-cookie philosophy and Kar's smirking irreverence. The same Nazi (Karel Roden) who tried to kill the monk in 1943 is still after that scroll, with his granddaughter (Victoria Smurfit) handling the nasty work. Apparently, bad movie role choices skip a generation. Kar has his hands full with the subway punks led by Mr. Funktastic (Marcus J. Pirae) and Bad Girl (Jamie King), who really isn't as bad as she thinks when Kar flashes her a smile. Monks can also perform marriage ceremonies, you know.
An occasional wire stunt or one-liner works in Bulletproof Monk, but most of the movie is stuff we've seen and heard before, and no amount of editing, camera-speed adjustments or volume can change that. Chow's charisma seems to be saved for his homeland cinema, and Scott, although acting more mature than usual, doesn't possess Owen Wilson's eccentric charm. This movie is a slouching tiger, with excitement draggin'.
Grade: D
Director: Paul Hunter
Cast: Chow Yun-Fat, Seann William Scott, Jamie King, Victoria Smurfit, Karel Roden
Screenplay: Ethan Reiff, Cyrus Voris
Rating: PG-13; violence, profanity, sexual situations
Running time: 104 min.