| Overall Grade: |
C- |
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| Story: |
C- |
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| Acting: |
C |
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| Direction: |
C- |
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| Visuals: |
C+ |
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Asian-style cinema for kids!
by Yahoo! Movies User (movies profile)
Apr 26, 2004
2
of
2 people found this review helpful
There are movies that are made for specific audiences and then there are movies that want to play to all audiences but end up appealing only to a certain demographic group. This applies particularly to Bulletproof Monk, which at first glance, is a movie for teens. Its got martial arts, guns, Matrix-style fight scenes, a hot babe, and even a plot that involves Nazis and a sacred artifact a la Indiana Jones.
But where as the Indy flicks could definitely play to all ages (even with all the bloody shootings and gory death scenes that must have stretched the PG ratings in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom), Bulletproof Monk is strictly a kids' flick. What does that mean? It means if you're over the age of twelve, you'll probably find yourself bored by the film.
How exactly does this movie narrow its appeal only to kids? Well, there's the story, which involves the "sacred artifact which must not get in the hands of evil." Yeah, sure, I know what you're thinking, the Indy flicks all had that same premise, too. But there's a difference. The first and third (not so much the second) truly gave the viewer a good idea of what was at stake if the prized possession fell into the wrong hands, and better yet, the macguffins were far more interesting than what's given to us here. I mean, come on, which would you prefer: the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail or a sacred scroll?
Chow Yun-Fat plays the protector of the scroll, a job that sounds like it'd suck considering it means living a life on the run. But there are benefits, notably the fact that he's impervious to bullets and can't age so long as he's the scroll's guardian. His only mission is to protect it while searching for the next guardian. That's where Seann William Scott comes in. Playing a pickpocket named Kar, he's the typical Thief with a Heart of Gold. So now Chow's got to train Kar to be the next protector while also evading capture from a nasty old Nazi (Karel Roden), who wants the rejuvenating powers of the scroll for himself.
Watching Bulletproof Monk, there's a clear sense of desperation on hand. Director Paul Hunter (his feature film debut) does a messy job of putting this film together, sloppily introducing puzzling plot elements along the way (the training school for potential scroll guardians, goons led by Roden's granddaughter, the origin of Kar's martial arts). It's like a cut and paste job, the worst part being the fact that too much of it is pasted together with MTV-style edits and quick cuts. A couple of the action sequences are okay, but most of it collapses in a mess of unconvincing martial arts, awful blue-screens, and confusing editing.
Seann William Scott is an odd choice to play Kar, mostly because the script doesn't play the role to his talents, that is, it doesn't give him any low-brow humor to work with. Scott's made a career out of playing total goofballs so it comes as a bit of a surprise that Chow Yun-Fat has more moments of comic relief. Adding James King into the mix is merely a bone tossed to either the girl-power female crowd or the horny male teens. Because her performance and martial arts work are subpar, she won't appeal to the former, and because she doesn't get naked, she'll only marginally appeal to latter.
Chow Yun-Fat is still the best thing Monk has going for it; he's charming, likeable, and surprisingly quite funny. It's also interesting to see that at this stage of his career, he's leaning more towards martial arts flicks than his usual "heroic bloodshed" films he was so famous for in Hong Kong.
At the beginning of this review, I noted that Monk was a kids' flick; how does that work? Simple, take every possible kick-ass element (martial arts, gun battles, hot chicks) that is used to appeal to the teenage to twenty-something crowd and water it down so that only kids will enjoy it (hardly any bone-crunching violence, Chow only uses guns once, zero nudity and hardly any cleavage, etc.). |
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