|
BY LARRY CARROLL |
Bulletproof Monk leaves you with the distinct, uneasy feeling
that it was whipped up in a test tube. You can imagine the studio executives
in lab coats, standing around their Bunsen burners and adding their ingredients:
a Rush Hour/Shanghai Noon culturally mismatched duo, some Crouching
Tiger/Matrix gravity-defying wire work, a good heap of comic-book
sensibility, and a recycled "Nazis trying to take over the world" plot,
all heated up to a lukewarm temperature. The formula yields a product
that's occasionally enjoyable and somewhat comfortable, but not nearly
as potent as it should be.
Over the last few years, John Woo has turned himself into the Sam Walton
of filmdom, franchising out his name and style to directors looking to
get started in Hollywood (Antoine Fuqua for The Replacement Killers,
Kirk Wong for The Big Hit, and now Paul Hunter). He gets a producing
credit in exchange, along with a good old-fashioned ego-stroking for
these tributes to his trademarked violence-as-ballet style, but is anybody
really benefiting from the Woo "cover band" world tour? The
directors come off as wannabes, the audience doesn't care enough to give
the movies any decent grosses, and Woo is just watering-down the impact
of his name, much like Luc Besson and Wes Craven have done with recent,
similarly lackluster producing attempts. During its two or three above-average
action moments, Bulletproof Monk will remind you of The Killer or Hard
Boiled or one of Woo's other great Hong Kong masterpieces - but all
that does is make you want to go home and watch one of them instead.
Based on an obscure comic book series, Monk tells the story of
a smart aleck New York pickpocket named Kar (Seann William Scott, the American
Pie movies), who forms an unlikely alliance with a monk (Chow Yun-Fat)
who has no name. This monk, who moves faster than Cool Papa Bell and
carries the deadliest punch since Jim Jones, guards an ancient artifact
called the "Scroll of the Ultimate", which gives God-like power
to anyone who reads it aloud. He is the latest in a long line of scroll
guards, each of whom serves a sixty-year term in which they don't age.
With this monk's tenure almost up, he has begun his quest for a successor.
At just about the same time he took over duties from his predecessor,
the nameless monk came face-to-face with a Nazi officer named Struker
(Karl Roden, Blade II) who was hell-bent on obtaining the scroll.
Now in his twilight years and confined to a wheelchair, the evil Struker
and his henchmen continue to chase the monk around the world. When Kar
grabs the scroll out of the monk's pocket in a crowded subway station,
he gets himself involved in all this mess. The monk sees a lot of potential
in Kar, and as they both fight to keep the Nazis away from the scroll,
he begins to realize that perhaps his young friend would make a good
monk himself.
The best thing about this movie is very easy to spot: Scott and Yun-Fat's
chemistry. A talented and charming comedic actor, Scott's Dude, Where's
My Car? idiocy plays well opposite the steely gaze of the martial
arts legend. Yun-Fat, meanwhile, displays a looser, more accessible attitude
than he has in any American film thus far, which could perhaps be attributed
to his growing familiarity with the English language. Yun-Fat's biggest
laughs come whenever he loosens up and makes a reference to Americana;
one recurring gag has him asking why hot dogs come ten to a pack while
hot dog buns are sold in packages of eight. Getting the stern Yun-Fat
to deliver lines like this might be an easy joke, but it's funny nonetheless.
The two actors, who obviously possess the type of honest affection for
each other that can't be faked, create a solid father-son relationship
that makes their characters far more endearing than they have any right
to be.
It's a good thing, too, because the mere thought of this movie with
two lesser leading actors is enough to send shivers down the spine. The
script seems to have been developed with a desire for the bare minimum,
and that work ethic has been passed on to the editing, special effects
and fight choreography departments as well.
As far as the script is concerned, there are problems all over the place.
To begin with, the object of everyone's attention is something that the
monks refuse to read and evildoers are constantly trying to get. All
the good guys hope that it will never be used, and this leaves the scroll
with no real reason for still existing, since it seems that any intelligent
monk would have destroyed the damn thing years ago. Next up is the movie's
insistence that anyone can walk on air and pull off Crouching Tiger moves
if they have the tranquility of mind to do so. This rationale would seem
to dictate a world full of Yoga instructors, massage therapists and Enya
fans who bounce around from one rooftop to the next while drinking green
tea; if anybody could do it, don't you think everyone would be trying?
For every one of these major plot oversights, there seems to be twice
as many minor ones - a preposterously staged verbal sparring scene between
Strucker's daughter Nina (Victoria Smurfit, About a Boy) and Kar's
love interest Jade (James King, Pearl Harbor) that could never
take place during a press conference, a Dr. Evil-ish underground torture
room that's more laughable than scary, a lazy Die Hard last jolt
where a (clearly) dead character comes back for one more chance to be
killed, and a host of other half-baked plot points lifted from other,
better, movies.
All this could reasonably be expected from many Hollywood action movies,
but what's really shocking is how technically inadequate it is for a
film of this size (the rumored budget is $50 million). The editing is
frequently disjointed, leaving you with a sense of disorientation during
many of the fight scenes, but it even occurs towards the end of the movie
during a simple shot of a man's hand. The fight choreography is not only
unimaginative, but often looks as though Scott, King and Smurfit are
trying out their moves for the first time. Whenever a nice move does
happen (like in an inspired scene where Yun-Fat eats a bowl of Cocoa
Puffs while dodging Scott's punches), it's too obviously CGI and/or wire
work. And the special effects often look like something you'd find in
a syndicated action show on a Saturday afternoon on TNT - the opening
scene on a rope bridge, the big catfight between the two girls, and the
final battle with the Nazi are all undermined by their obviously manufactured
surroundings. Honestly, there are three above average action moments
in the movie - the acrobatic flip beneath the helicopter, the kicking
of the bullet cartridges at the bad guy, and the move where Scott spins
through the air and lets a bullet pass between his arms - and if you've
seen the commercial you've already witnessed them all.
Besides Yun-Fat and Scott, the rest of the actors are decent if unspectacular.
King and Smurfit both provide some nice eye candy and the occasional
moment of conviction, but they both have their share of problems spitting
out the script's wooden dialogue. Roden allows himself to fall in to
the trap of caricature with his Nazi portrayal, and it keeps him from
ever becoming the least bit scary. Marcus J. Pirae, in his film debut,
has a hilarious but all-too-brief cameo as an egotistical baddie named
Mr. Funktastic. Japanese film veteran Mako (Seven Years in Tibet),
as Kar's boss, comes across as the best supporting actor, managing to
touch your funnybone and heart a lot more than would normally be expected
in a role so tiny.
Bulletproof Monk is not something you should see in the theatre.
It's this generation's Remo Williams, a movie that has no goal
but to copy the things that made other movies successful. Throughout Monk,
Seann William Scott keeps guessing at Chow Yun-Fat's riddle. Why are
the number of hotdogs and buns incompatible? What is the meaning behind
the existence of a product that seems to have no reason for being? Well,
the answer should be obvious to anyone who sits through Bulletproof
Monk: to trick the consumer into spending his money.
GRADE: C |
