MOVIE REVIEW

Bulletproof Monk  (2003)

Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Seann William Scott
Director: Paul Hunter

Rating: PG-13

Studio: MGM

Review Posted: 4.15.03

Spoilers: Minor

By Sara Michelle Fetters

"Monk Another English Disappointment For Superstar Chow"

To understand the enduring appeal of Asian and cult film aficionados of Chow Yun-Fat you need to go back to the start of his friendship and working relationship with fellow Hong Kong legend John Woo (Face/Off, Windtalkers). With the Tsui Hark produced A Better Tomorrow each announced their presence with a steely authority seldom seen in pictures. Legends were indelibly born and a huge following from around the globe quickly followed.

Together, Chow and Woo launched a new form of action cinema, substituting kung-fu for guns, and bring to life stunning morality tales set against the backdrop of triads, killers, cops and thieves. These were visceral, electrically charged thrillers, with their final trio – The Killer, Once a Thief and Hard-Boiled – becoming some of the most groundbreaking and imitated action whirlwinds ever made.

So for those deeply in love with Chow and his Asian masterpieces – I’ve always been partial to Ringo Lam’s City on Fire (the inspiration for Reservoir Dogs) and Wong Jing’s God of Gamblers – his journey stateside has been a bit of a let down. Antoine Fuqua’s 1998 film The Replacement Killers, Chow’s American debut, was all style and no substance and while his teaming with Mark Wahlberg in The Corrupter the very next year was far more substantial he was still undone by an overly familiar and clichéd script. Even the actor’s much-hyped turn in the Jodie Foster film Anna and the King was a letdown, although the movie does indeed contain Yun-Fat’s single best English language performance.

In fact, it wasn’t until the actor returned to Asia to make Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with fellow Hong Kong icon Michelle Yeoh (The Heroic Trio, Tomorrow Never Dies) that many audiences finally stood up and took notice of the actor. A sublime, heartfelt and extremely potent performance, I thought Chow was robbed at Oscar time when the nominations were announced. All the same, with that film’s monster success and popularity, it only made me happy when thinking of the roles Chow would hopefully be offered when returning to Hollywood.

Well, I’m still a huge fan of the actor but am feeling a tad less hopeful now that I’ve seen his latest film, that choppy and overly silly comic book action film Bulletproof Monk. In a role written expressly for him and in a film shepherded through production by good friend John Woo, video director Paul Hunter’s debut contains a surprise and smile here and there, but overall isn’t anything Chow should be eager to list prominently on his resume.

Yun-Fat plays Monk, a nameless Tibetan protector who’s been guarding a sacred scroll containing all the power of the universe for the past 60 years. As the scroll’s guardian, he has been given the power of time, seeming to not have aged a day since his master (Roger Yuan, Shanghai Noon) ceded protection of the sacred item over to him.

Now Monk has come to New York searching for the one who will take over custody of the scroll from him. He’s waiting for a soul to complete each of the three prophecies – defeat an army of enemies with a flock of cranes overhead, battle for love in a house of Jade and to free brothers one didn’t know they had – that signal their worthiness to take over guardianship.

But all Monk has found so far is a good-natured thief named Kar (Sean William Scott) who has a penchant for picking pockets. He’s also got a heart-of-gold just busting to try and get out. Kar is not above buying a hot dog with his last dollar for a homeless person or throwing away an entire day’s haul to save the life of a trapped little girl. After fighting off an army of thugs in an underground subway station using kung fu lifted from 1978’s The Descendant of Wing Chun, Monk begins to wonder if this scraggily youth may indeed by the one he is looking for.

Soon he’s imparting words of wisdom and asking eternally stupefying questions about hotdogs and buns to the bewildered young upstart all the while dodging goons sent by the murderous granddaughter (Victoria Smurfit, About a Boy) of heinous former Nazi commander Struker (Karel Roden, Blade 2, 15 Minutes). He's been searching for the scroll for over 60 years and now, near the end of his life, he find's it deep within his grasp and will fight to the bitter end to gain its secrets. With the help of Kar and another gifted youngster he knows only as “bad girl” (Jamie King, Pearl Harbor), Monk must stop Struker before he unlashes the power of the scroll and makes the Earth over into a fascist’s paradise.

Based on the popular comic book series of the same name, Bulletproof Monk is every bit as whimsical and silly as it sounds. In some ways, that’s a good thing. Director Hunter brings a surprisingly light touch to the proceedings and this is easily the most at ease Chow has been in an English production. He’s a joy to watch, walking through the film with a cocksure grace that’s far above anything else in the motion picture. Commanding the screen, it is easy to see why good friend Woo thought the role of Monk would be a good fit for the iconic actor.

More surprising is the affably contagious presence of William Scott. Known mainly for his moronic turn as Stifler in the American Pie trilogy (part three comes out this summer), I must admit to being less than enthused when I read early clippings about his casting here. Never having been one to have really impressed me with his ability to play the idiot, I was thrown aback a bit to see how solid an actor he really is. Kar isn’t a completely three-dimensional character as written in Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris’ (Demon Knight) screenplay, yet Scott still manages to make something of him that’s endearing and memorable.

The rest of the cast is adequate enough, but only Roden really does anything to make an impression. Granted, that’s not because he’s such a great villain. Rather, it is more for the fact he takes this stock cartoon character and then does all that he can to beat him into the ground. Struker is a creation right out of a bad 1940’s serial adventure and Roden plays him as such. This Nazi isn’t so much as scary as he is silly in the extreme, the site of his aged figure morphing into a powerful kung fu fighting fascist super-goon almost laughable.

Then, that’s part of Bulletproof Monk’s problem; it’s too silly to take seriously yet too serious to pass completely off as a farce. The violence, while all kept in the Crouching Tiger-meets-Matrix style, is still too potent to achieve the Raiders of the Lost Ark balance Hunter is clearly reaching for, and the script was never quite intelligent enough to get me to care for these characters and what they're fighting for. Also, the film seems as if it has been edited by a jackhammer, stuck together more with masking tape than with an eye for detail or nuance. It moves in fits and starts, never jelling into a cohesive whole.

In the end, Yun-Fat and William Scott do what they can and somehow manage to make Bulletproof Monk, if not rewarding, at least watchable. They appear to be having so much fun working with one another and their chemistry so genial and strong, the duo almost manage to elevate the movie to a feel-good plateau it doesn’t deserve. For the latter and his inglorious track record of films this has to be considered a rousing success, but for the legendary Chow Bulletproof Monk can only go down as one more Hollywood disappointment for an immensely talented actor whom deserves much, much better.

Rating: 2.5 out of 4

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