Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
We got tons and tons and tons of reviews for this one over the last few months, and we didn’t run them because they were all for the Internet bootleg version. There was work done after that cut of the film, and I wanted to make sure that we were running reviews that reflected what you would actually see in the theater.
And it looks like it was worth the wait:
SPOILER WARNING!!!
BULLETPROOF MONK is bad, really bad. We’re talking DOUBLE DRAGON bad!
Look, before I begin let me just go on the record and state that I’ve been in an especially cranky mood this past week. For starters, I nearly had a little accident late last week but still managed to aggravate my sciatic nerve in the process causing some most unpleasant back pain. Then I had a computer monitor just up and die on me. Finally, because of a combination of lower back pain and just being busy with several projects (including a schlock film festival you’ll probably be hearing about in the near future) I’ve been greatly sleep deprived lately. Then I top it all off I end up having this horrendous movie-going experience and it wasn’t all the fault of the film itself.
Allow me to just say a little something to anyone out there who brings an infant to the movies. If your baby starts screaming, not crying, I’m talking earsplitting screaming, take you and your child out of the theater ASAP. Show some friggin’ respect for the rest of us who paid to see this crappy film! Christ-on-a-stick, what the hell is wrong with people nowadays? If that wasn’t bad enough, when this stupid bitch finally got up and took the screaming hellbeast out of the theater, she didn’t actually leave the theater but just went to the back and stood next to the doorway. Periodically she’d step out for a few brief moments whenever the baby would start hollering again. Unfortunately, I was sitting in the back row and this woman and her human decibel machine were standing right behind me. For the last third of the movie, in addition to the occasional nerve-shattering blast of newborn fury, I also got to hear the sounds of the rattling car keys she gave the baby to play with and her comments along the lines of “Shh…mommy’s trying to watch the movie.” Screw you lady, what about me? What about everyone else in the damn theater too? Could this woman have been anymore narcissistic? Oh, towards the end of the movie the baby dropped the keys and the woman couldn’t find them in the dark so I got to hear her fumbling around behind me trying to find them while the baby began crying at the top of it’s lungs again. As it turned out, the keys were under my seat so I even got disturbed physically.
The sad thing is that if I had gotten up and beaten the hell out of this woman I would be considered the bad guy. And believe me, I was very tempted to do so. Let me put every parent out there with a baby on notice. If you and your screaming infant are in the same theater I’m in when I go see X2 and/or MATRIX: RELOADED and you don’t remove that thing from the theater… I’m not going to ask you politely. I’m not going to complain to the manager. I’m just going to start wailing on your ass! Consider this your only warning.
As I said, I’ve been rather cranky lately.
So I made my way into the theater after getting mugged at the concession stand ($4 for a Frozen Coke? I could buy it at a gas station for $1.25!) and took my seat right in the middle of the trailer for Michael Moore’s new documentary BOOZING FOR CANCUN. Let me get this straight. Hollywood expects people to pay money to go to a movie theater and see a bunch of people get drunk, then get naked, and then, possibly, maybe, have sex? For a cheaper price I could buy my own booze and rent a porno. Following this was a trailer for PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN that I think looks really good although Johnny Depp looks too much like a Goth rock pirate. Next up was the JEEPERS CREEPERS 2 trailer that looks like it will either be stupid fun or just plain stupid. Before anyone can accuse JEEPERS CREEPERS 2 of being an unnecessary sequel the trailer for LEGALLY BLONDE 2 ran. She’s a Washington intern in this one or something like that. I can only hope she ends up working for Gary Condit. After just over 15 minutes of trailers, commercial, and public service announcements, DOUBLE DRAGON 2, I mean BULLETPROOF MONK began.
Chow Yun-Fat is a monk with no name at a Tibetan temple in 1943 that has been chosen to be the latest in a long line of guardians of a sacred scroll called “The Scroll of the Ultimate.” Exactly what power the scroll holds in never revealed other than whoever reads it will have the power to make the world a paradise or hell on earth and mankind isn’t ready for either. The changing of the guard takes place every 60 years and as soon as this change takes place and the nameless monk is bestowed with the Powers of Greyskull, a platoon of Nazis who must have been searching for Brad Pitt show up demanding the sacred scroll. Monks get shot, the Nazis yell an awful lot, and our title monk manages to escape in a mystical way that is never actually revealed to the audience.
Fast forward 60 years and we’re in the city of San Francisco. At least I think the movie is set in San Francisco but I don’t recall it ever being specifically named. Hell, maybe it was New York. Doesn’t really matter. Well, it is here that we first come across Seann William Scott as he panhandles for money standing on the sidewalk holding a sign that reads “WILL FLASH SHIT-EATING GRIN FOR FOOD.”
Stop here for a sec. I know some people in Hollywood insist on making Seann William Scott a movie star but I just don’t see it happening. This guy is more Matt LeBlanc than Tom Cruise and I just don’t see this guy doing anything more than playing the hunky doofus he seems to play in every single movie. To me, Seann William Scott is just Jerry O’Connell’s stoner cousin. If performing alongside Chow Yun-Fat doesn’t make this guy look like a star then I rather doubt he’ll have better luck playing The Rock’s comic relief later this year.
But anyway, Scott is Kar, a pickpocket with a heart of gold who, when he’s not wandering the streets stealing from hard-working, honest people, lives and works at a movie theater that specializes in showing Chinese martial arts movies and it is by studying these films that he has developed his own kung fu technique called Grin of the Shit-Eating Monkey!
I’m sorry. I apologize but I just can’t get past Scott’s perpetual smirk. He’s constantly flashing this grin. It just drives me nuts. The guy is like a living breathing version of Muttley from the old Wacky Races cartoon. I’m going to try to refrain from making anymore cracks about this guy’s smirk but it isn’t going to be easy.
The Monk With No Name is also in town and those pesky Nazis are still after him. This leads to the two bumping into one another in the subway where Kar swipes the scroll. Kar will then venture deep into the subway system and into the lair of Mista Funktastic. If Hollywood really does remake THE WARRIORS and they decide to introduce an all-gay gang then they need to get the actor playing Mista Funktastic to reprise his role and lead that gang. No heterosexual looks or talks like Mista Funktastic! Apparently he’s some underworld crimeboss, and I mean that literally, who wants a percentage of Kar’s thievery. This doesn’t make any sense. How does that work? Kar can keep the actual watch but Mr. Funktastic gets the band? Doesn’t matter because they just end up fighting anyway.
I know the director of BULLETPROOF MONK is a first-time director but from the looks of things so were the writers, editors, and fight choreographers. The fights are so poorly edited that you can hardly follow them and its quite obvious that everyone is a novice martial artist who has had had a month’s worth of training before hand because the martial arts are about as mediocre as I’ve seen them in any studio movie in the God knows how long. Perhaps CROUCHING TIGER FOR DUMMIES would have been a more appropriate title?
Also during this scene we’re introduced Jaime King, who plays The Girl With No Name Until The Third Act. Jaime King is like Jaime Pressly only she has the last name King and a different hairstyle. Except for those two things, Jaime King and Jaime Pressly are virtually indistinguishable. I’ve checked IMDB and it insists that they are not in fact the same person but I’m still not 100% convinced. By the way, this is the part where you insert a “sexy, tomboy beanpole” joke.
Anyway, King’s character makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. When we’re first introduced to her she’s dressed like a ninja and hanging out in the subway with Mista Funktastic’s gang and from the looks of things she’s also his girlfriend. Looking at Miss King’s appearance during her early scenes she’s either reliving her heroin chic days or Tera Reid did her make-up. A little later, she’s look like a normal young woman but now she shows up at the opening of a museum exhibit dedicated to educating people about crimes against humanity where she gets into philosophical arguments about whether or not exhibiting such things might inspire more rather than prevent. Oh, she also speaks fluent Chinese. Then in the third act she reveals herself to be Jade, the loaded daughter of an infamous and imprisoned Russian mob boss. This is something she isn’t proud of but at the same time she doesn’t seem all that bothered by it either. Her explanation for the stuff in the subway earlier, “On the streets I can earn my own respect.” This was the only moment in the movie that I laughed out loud at because there is no way in hell that anyone who hangs out with Mista Funktastic could possibly ever earn any respect whatsoever. Her explanation for speaking fluent Chinese and hanging out in museums, “Waaaaaaaaaaa!” Okay, I think that was that screaming baby that said that and not Miss King. As a matter of fact, I don’t think we ever got an explanation about the other stuff.
Our villains consist of neo-Nazis led by the now old and decrepit and wheelchair bound Nazi who led the group back in 1943. They run that museum as a cover for their evil operations because, as Kar later theorizes, “It’s the last place you’d expect to find them.” Actually, I’d suspect that Israel would be the last place you’d find Nazis but that’s just me. When a villain is so generic that his only defining traits are that he is a guy and he is evil, I propose that filmmakers should just name the character “Guy Evil.” Well, in BULLETPROOF MONK we get Guy Evil, his daughter Girl Evil, and an endless supply of generic evil henchmen. What do the bad guys want? The scroll. Why do they want it? Power. What do they plan to do once they get that power? Evil! That’s pretty much all there is to them.
So after their initial meeting, The Monk With No Name comes to believe that this petty thief might actually be his successor based on this prophecy that states three things much happen to prove that the person is the next guardian of the scroll. I forget what those three things are. I remember something about defeating an army while cranes circle overheard and the guardian must not have a name to the point that they must forget their own but I don’t recall if that was actually part of the prophecy or just a bylaw that the guardian must subscribe to.
So for the next hour we get the following:
“Witty” banter between Monk and Kar. I put witty in quotation marks because the dialogue was definitely designed to be witty but I assure you it is anything but. Seeing Chow Yun-Fat reduced to countering Sean William Scott’s attempts at kung fu while eating a bowl of Coco Puffs and waxing philosophical about why hot dog buns come in packages of 10 while hot dogs come in packages of 8 is just really depressing. I think back on some of the all-time great teacher/student combos to turn up in movies like this – Mr. Miyagi and Daniel, Chiun and Remo Williams, that kid and the ghost of Bruce Lee in NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER – and come to realize just how little chemistry these two have together. Just awful!
Lots and lots of running! The movie should have been called HAULING ASS MONK instead of BULLETPROOF MONK because our heroes spend more time running away than fighting. When they do get into a fight scene it lasts all of about 30 seconds before they go back to running again. Fights consist mostly of 3 or 4 kicks and that’s it. And then there’s that one really poorly thought out scene with Chow Yun-Fat moving in slow motion with a gun in each hand after disarming a villain. The worst thing you can do in a movie this lousy is go out of your way to remind us of your star’s better movies.
Pointless villainy! See the evil villains kill the old man who runs the Chinese theater for no particular reason. See the villains get another monk to rat on our heroes only to get double-crossed by the Nazis and killed! See an old man in a wheelchair sneer! By God, they are evil personified! Besides, these Nazis don’t need that scroll because they’ve already got psychic powers. For some reason they haven’t been able to catch this monk for 60 years but every single time he goes out in public they manage to show up. They just have a knack for showing up at the right place at the right time. To my surprise, Mista Funktastic and his gang never turn up again making their appearance in the movie both annoying and pointless. I was convinced they were going to turn up again in some fashion.
Romance! There’s actually a romantic subplot between Kar and Jade that is wedged into this dreck with all the success of a square peg being jammed into a round hole. Scott has even less chemistry with her than he does with Chow Yun-Fat and as I said before, they have no chemistry at all.
That’s pretty much it until the final act when Kar and Jade have to team up to rescue Monk who the Nazis have captured and plan to use their brain sucking machine on. Don’t ask me to explain it because I can’t. I just know they have some sort of device that they strap someone into and it can extract information from their brain. I think that’s what it did but when Guy Evil was explaining it I was being subjected to another baby tantrum. Since Jade is the daughter of mobster, she of course has access to massive firepower and a bulletproof car. They go in guns ablazin’ and finish off all the bad guys. Jade gets into a kung fu fight with Girl Evil and kills her. Guy Evil discovers that the scroll is actually tattooed on Monk’s body and proceeds to read it. After a few lines he begins growing younger and super powered. It turns out the last line isn’t tattooed but Monk has it memorized. Next thing you know Kar and Monk are engaged in a fight to the death with Das Uber Nazi that is so mediocre it actually gave me a new appreciation for the Jean Claude Van Damme vs. Raul Julia battle from the end of STREET FIGHTER. Nazi is killed. Ritual to make Kar the new guardian takes place but is interrupted by Super Guy Evil who is still alive and shoots Jade. Fortunately the newly super powered Kar is able to kill him in 5 seconds with a single kick. Jade’s okay because it turns out that she was part of the prophecy all along and both of them suddenly find parts of the scroll magically tattooed on their torsos. That damn baby starts screaming one last time. The two of them get to spend the next 60 years together protecting the scroll. Chow Yun-Fat, having now grown old, whispers the final lines of the scroll to them and walks away. Does this mean that Kar and Jade no longer have names? Have they forgotten their own names and, if so, what will they yell out during sex? I don’t get those answers but I do get a little more “witty” banter then the credits role and I seriously consider punching a woman holding a baby.
Watching Chow Yun-Fat star in a movie this pathetically lame is like watching Denzel Washington starring in STEEL instead of Shaq or Clint Eastwood playing LIGHTNING JACK instead of Paul Hogan. Someone of Chow Yun-Fat’s caliber should be getting A-list material and not being saddled with lame buddy action hokum like this. Quit giving him crap to work with!
What gets me is how I’ve described the movie as being on the level of DOUBLE DRAGON but truth be told they’re virtually the same movie. Instead of wisecracking brothers who know kung fu we’ve got two guys who constantly smirk at one another and know kung fu. Instead of Alyssa Milano as the badass love interest we’ve got Jaime King as the badass love interest. Instead of a magic amulet that grants ultimate power we’ve got a sacred scroll that grants ultimate power. Both movies are loaded with “witty” banter and short, mediocre fight scenes. Most importantly, both are very cheap looking and poorly made. Who in their right minds would ever want to rip-off the movie DOUBLE DRAGON?
BULLETPROOF MONK is based on a comic book I’ve never heard of and quite frankly I’d like to keep it that way. I hear it’s as forgettable as the movie. In fact, I’ve already forgotten it.
The Foywonder (www.badmovies.net)
Thanks, man. You always deliver the goods.
"Moriarty" out.
