A couple of months ago, I used this space to bash \Daredevil"" pretty mercilessly. I have no regrets about what I said, no matter how harsh it was. But at least ""Daredevil"" was a decent idea. The concept, the characters and the actors made for the framework of a strong action movie. It was just horrendously executed, because of a poorly conceived script and an inadequate director. Now we have something like ""Bulletproof Monk,"" which fails because it started with a bad idea which was then assembled badly.
Based on the underground comic book, ""Bulletproof Monk"" begins with a young monk assigned to protect the Scroll of the Ultimate, a scroll that is believed to hold the power to control the world. The young man takes on the responsibility, renouncing his name and becoming The Monk With No Name (Chow Yun-Fat). Sixty years later, as his term of protecting the scroll is coming to an end, he stumbles into a gifted fighter in New York City, Kar (Seann William Scott), whom he discovers after Kar saves his life. Soon The Monk With No Name begins training Kar, also teaming with a tough Russian mob princess (Jamie King) as they try to protect the sacred scroll from a dangerous new pursuer.
The way ""Bulletproof Monk"" was assembled probably seemed like a good idea on paper, but in action, it just doesn't mesh. The first flaw is the selection of stars. Scott is a great comedic talent, but his brand of comedy doesn't pair up well with the dignity and charisma of a performer like Yun-Fat. It works both ways. Both men are great in most of their work, but together they weaken each other's strengths. Scott needs room to not be taken seriously at all, while Yun-Fat needs room to be taken seriously. It just wasn't a thoughtful match, which makes the movie a waste.
Then there's the story. You know something's wrong when you're underwhelmed by a movie that has supernatural fight moves, evil martial artists, super-good martial artists, Nazis, an old, wise man training a brash young man and a sexy, blonde love interest. After all, those are classic ingredients for a popcorn movie. But the combination works against the movie, bogging it down with too many ideas and not enough thoughtful execution of individual stories. The strength of the first ""X-Men"" movie was that it didn't try to introduce every character or tell every story. Movies like ""Bulletproof Monk"" and ""Daredevil"" could learn a lot from that.
The last decision that negatively affected the movie was the selection of Paul Hunter to direct. ""Bulletproof Monk"" was his first feature, having previously only directed commercials and music videos. Prominent music video directors have made some very good movies, but they were almost all better video directors than Hunter. David Fincher (""Se7en"") and Spike Jonze (""Being John Malkovich"") are excellent directors, but Paul Hunter directed some of the least thoughtful videos on MTV, from the worst of Puffy to the dumbest of Mariah Carey. His most interesting video was just D'Angelo swiveling around naked. So is it really surprising that he would go on to make an uninteresting movie?
""Bulletproof Monk"" isn't a terrible movie. With talents like Scott and Yun-Fat, the movie inevitably has some very entertaining moments. But a movie with this kind of budget and these stars has no right to be this uninteresting. And when a movie pairs unappetizing martial arts with dull, psuedo-philosophical one-liners like saying that gravity only exists if you think it does, you know it's time to pre-order those ""Matrix: Reloaded"" tickets.
