Bulletproof Monk

The movie made from the comic book that was, in essence, nothing more than a movie pitch in comic book form. The comic this film was 'based' on bears little to no resemblance to the final film other than the name of the hero, Kar.

In the incredibly wordy and boring little comic, the Monk is a quasi-mythical figure who protected Chinese peasants from the blah-blah-blah in the past. No Nazies. In the book Kar is a young asian man embroiled in gang fights and whatnot, trying to win the heart of the ice-princess daughter of a crimelord. The best part about the book is the artwork from Mike Avon Oemig, other than that it's a pass.

The movie stars Sean Stiffler Scott, pouty faced model James King and Chow Yun Fat. Stiffler and Fat are fine and have some good chemistry. King is a bit bland and uneven.

The film as a whole is a hodge-podge of things and never really gells into a complete whole. It has some good action sequences that mostly involve Fat, and some horrible action sequences, with some really bad wire-fu and blue-screened backgrounds.

The script brings up characters and then forgets them, such as the Mister Funktastic and his band of criminals who seem set up for a larger role and then just disappear. It also suffers from not knowing whether it wants to be a kung-fu film, a buddy comedy or a superhero film. It fails at trying to be all three.

The bad guy Nazi Strucker kept reminding me of Gary Oldman's Dr Smith from the Lost in Space Film. I'm still unsure what his torture device was doing exactly. Was it electrocuting the people or using high pressure beams of water to bore into their brains? A little expository dialogue on the point would have been helpful.

This seems like a film that was 'written' by scripting out big action sequences and then left up to the editors and second unit director to hash out what was actually happening. There was one example of horrible dubbed over dialogue where the bad guy was explaining what his nefarious plans were while his daughter wheeled him through his underground lair that was just as preposterous as anything from the Adam West Batman series.

This felt like the direct to video sequal to a successfull action film, along the lines of Mortal Kombat II or Best of the Best IV.

I was not impressed, though I did enjoy Fat's performance, I only wish that the movie could have done more with him.