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Bulletproof Monk

Movie Bulletproof Monk Director Paul Hunter Cast Chow Yun-Fat, Sean William Scott

By Subhash K Jha

He doesn’t have a name. And you wish he didn’t have to inflict himself on us either. Chow Yun-Fat believes in laying out the action far and thick. On this occasion the fists don’t fly. Words do. Chow Yun-Fat who played a wise king in the underrated Anna & The King, is back to spewing bumpersticker wisdom in a film that’s as wise putting one’s face in a toilet bowl. Director Paul Hunter (whoever he might be) has nothing to do except assume a supremely subservient role to the special effects superviser. Hunter simply lets the narrative spew its putrid garbage all over the place. There’s no sense of narrative control or tonal temperence in this fast-flowing feast of flurry. Usually films about odd pairs from Laurel & Hardy, to Jim Carrey & Jeff Daniels in Dumb & Dumber, to Billy Crystal & Robert de Niro in Analyze This depend on the brotherly bonding between the actors. Here, I’m afraid Chow Yun-Fat and his co-star Sean William Scott look like two hostile co-passengers waiting to take the last seat on the final bus out of town. Hurried, perfunctory and thoroughly misguided Bulletproof Monk doesn’t have a single redeeming moment of humour or even violence...unless you look for unintended humour and the violent underbelly of a famished plot which craves for redemption(the last bit of prose echoes the monk’s sagacious swipes). And if you enjoy a school full of monks being thrashed and battered by the baddies, then be the monk’s guest. In the category of unintended humour I’d the highest marks to the film’s demented villain who wants to stay young forever and his grand-daughter who ties our monk hero to an electronic stake and does kinky things to his pelvic region and cooes, "Ooh. so it isn’t just your brain that’s capable of expanding." Really! Someone ought to put a zipper on the foul-tongued villains and the self-important heroes who have nothing to lose except their witlessness. The initial encounters between the monk with no name and his unlikely ally who must protect an ancient magical scroll from the villains (oh for chrissake!) could have been amusing. The fact that Kar (Seanne William Scott) has learnt martial arts by being a projectionist in a movie theatre is the only source of light and humour in this dark and dreadful tale of helium heroes and a fiery young heroine named Bad Girl who behaves as if she has seen Charlies Angels once too often. Here’s a bit of advice to all Chow Yun-Fat fans: watch him in Replacement Killers again. But don’t go anywhere near Bulletproof Monk. It’s the last word in idiotic action.