Bulletproof Monk

Wire-Fu powered Monk fights Nazi organisation while teaching a wise-cracking yet good-hearted pick pocket wisdom... and how to defy gravity.

Monk With No Name (Chow Yun Fat)
Kar (Seann William Scott)
Bad Girl (Jaime King)
Strucker aka Nazi officer aka Old Nazi aka Naziman (Karl Roden)
Nina aka Blondie (Victoria Smurfit)
Mista Funktastic (Marcus J. Pirae)
Cinema Owner (Mako)

Year: 2003
Censorship Rating: M (for the kung fu violence)

As a short introduction to this review, it was the first one I wrote for CoH Warcry so I was still feeling out what I would do. In tranferring it to this site, I have changed it a little bit, but the bulk of it is the same. Anyway...

The movie opens in Tibet, 1943. Two monks are going at each other with all the wire fu skills they have. After a short-ish fight, the younger monk beats the older monk [Youth Beats Experience every time!] and we find that the young monk's training is now complete. Young monk has apparently satisfied four prophecies that means he is worthy of becoming the Monk With No Name (MWNN for short) and can now defend the Scroll of the Ultimate, which is some sort of vaguely defined magical item that would grant the reader immense power and that would mean disaster if it ever fell into the wrong hands [stop me if you've heard this before]. The requirements of how to become a the Guardian of the Scroll of the Ultimate are stated for the audience's benefit [I'm not going to go into the prophecies, other than to say they seem to rely a lot of word play and personal interpretation - watch the movie if you really want to know what you must do to become a Bulletproof Monk.]

Old monk passes on the title of MWNN to his acolyte in a blast of wind and special effects. Now aged greatly, the even-older old monk then makes the mistake of talking about what he is looking forward to now that he is retired, instantly attracting bullets from the Nazis who have just arrived to steal the Scroll. The other monks use a French infantry technique in an attempt to keep the Nazis out of the Scroll Temple, but find that standing in a line against automatic weapons doesn't work. MWNN then goes all wire fu on the Nazis, although a bit late to save his comrades.

Chewing on some scenery, the Nazi officer swaggers around towards the Scroll while his men get beaten up by the MWNN, only to find it has been taken by the MWNN. The Nazi officer also gets a monkey scratch to the face that serves no point other than to perhaps be an act of karma [which doesn't quite work for me, since 'Nazi + kill holy men = small scratch to face' doesn't balance out in my books].

Despite having shown excellent fighting abilities and having dodged / avoided more difficult things, the MWNN then decides to pull a Darth Maul and just stand there while the Nazi officer shoots him off a cliff. Nazi officer realises that the magical scroll is obviously with the monk [doh!] and becomes unhappy.

Cut to the present...

The camera centres in on a rogue-ishly scruffy man in a black leather jacket, making this man the movie "hero" by default. In the first few minutes of meeting our "hero", we see him pick someone's pocket and assault a police officer. [You know, petty theft really makes me relate to a character, but perhaps he has a heart of gold that will make everything else he does okay... but for the moment our "hero" is being chased by cops.]

MWNN is also around, this time being chased by ominous men in black suits.

Both chases (including one scene where the fat cop has to sit down since he's been running [komedy gold!]) run into each other, resulting in a little girl being knocked onto the tracks, with a train bearing down on her! Both the MWNN and our "hero" managed to save the little girl, but it costs our "hero" his ill-gotten stash. MWNN looks bemused [for the first of many, many times] and lectures our "hero" on life in an esoteric and potentially annoying way. Our "hero" disrespectfully listens through these flawed pearls of wisdom before pick pocketing the Scroll of the Ultimate from MWNN. Our "hero" doesn't get far however; he apparently has been violating Thieves' Guild regulation 8 section AA (Stealing without a Permit) and is brought before the Thief King... err, Mista Funktastic.

The rather buff Mista Funktastic [who obviously spent a lot more time working out than working on a good name] gives our "hero" a choice - join or die. (Oh, and at some point here we learn our "hero's" name is Kar). Kar does what any one of us would do in his situation - he makes jokes and wisecracks. This means he gets a bit of a beating. Kar then offers the Scroll of the Ultimate to Mista Funktastic, but the Funktastic one doesn't recognise the scroll's true value and throws it away. Kar's day seem numbered especially when he attempts to pick-up a girl who is, at that time, hitting him with her fists. [Now, I'm no romance expert, but I believe that attempting to score when you are being pummelled in the face is the wrong course of action. Then again, I could be wrong...]

... because after beating him a bit, the Bad Girl nudges a metal pipe to Kar that means Mista Funktastic doesn't kill Kar and end the film early. MWNN sits in the background and watches this, having returned to get his scroll. Kar manages to showboat his way into almost certain defeat, but Bad Girl manages to convince Funktastic not to kill Kar via the offer of sex. MWNN looks bemused, since Kar has just met one prophecy on the path to Bulletproof Monkdom.

MWNN catches up with Kar for another charming character moment. Kar is getting sick of seeing MWNN and hurries off.

In the meanwhile, Bad Girl shows that she isn't 'that' kind of girl by not having sex with Mista Funktastic and then dumping him [thus showing she is some other type of girl completely]. Funktastic takes being dumped and humiliated in front of his crew very well by leaving for the rest of the picture. Bad Girl also realises that her necklace is gone. Now, where could that be?

Kar gets back to his home / work at a run down Kung Fu movie cinema. He charmingly insults his boss / landlord with a few racial barbs, but this only endears him further to both the boss and the audience [because nothing is more charming than covert racism].

MWNN crashes Kar's place. Kar tries to get physical, but MWNN just looks bemused before outclassing Kar in almost every way and then throwing a few Zen philosophy quips about. It turns out Kar stole Bad Girl's necklace and intends to return it, winning her gratitude. MWNN rightly points out how stupid this is, since whenever Kar shows up the necklace, Bad Girl is going to wonder how he got it, not thank him for finding it. Kar looks confused. MWNN looks bemused.

MWNN deflects Kar's questions about what is going on with some line about hot dogs and buns. Kar looks confused, and rightly so; this dialogue makes no sense and would be very annoying to be involved in. [MWNN uses 'enlightenment' to not answer Kar quite a bit through this movie and it comes across as a bit patronising.]

Kar shows us where he learnt his kung fu skillz - by copying the bad kung fu movies he watches. [Yeah, right. I'm sure you could pick up some knowledge from doing this, but you'd get a lot of bad fighting habits too. Anyway, now we know how he learned to fight rather than brawl and we all know that kung fu > brawling, so Kar can't be all bad. Or something like that.]

Cut to the opening speech for the 'Conscience of Humanity' (CoH? What the-?), delivered by Blondie (she has a name, but it's delivered late in the film, so Blondie it is). 'Conscience' talk about how good they are and how they want to improve things [meaning they are obviously a front for something evil]. Bad Girl is there for reasons of 'it's in the script' [not common sense]. She and Blondie have a talk at each other, but it's not necessarily about the same thing. [Actually, it's not like they are even listening to each other reply when they speak, which just comes across as terrible scripting.]

'Conscience' is revealed to be evil [shock!] when the Nazi officer [now an old Nazi] shows up and is revealed to be the founder of 'Conscience'. He wants the Scroll of the Ultimate for the eternal youth it will bring him and complains about the failure he sees around him [in my opinion, it is pretty hypocritical for a member of the Third Reich to go around complaining about failure given the reviled and defeated nature of everything it stood for, but then he is the Evil Boss and failure is everyone else's fault, isn't it?].

Kar tries to pick pocket again, only for MWNN to foil him. MWNN then shows he also has a preachy vegan side to go with his annoying enlightened side [thus making him an ideal dinner party guest]. Bad Girl shows up, demanding her necklace from Kar that he sheepishly hands over. We have a character / love interest moment, as Bad Girl and MWNN talk in what I figure is Tibetan [and which random stranger doesn't know Tibetan?] about how Kar has potential. Kar and Bad Girl give each other a Look of Love [or at least Mutual Attraction] before bad guys in suits show up to chase MWNN. Kar goes off to help MWNN.

MWNN gets to do some heroic posing and non-lethal assaults on the bad guys while Kar just runs around.

Ducking into a miscellaneous warehouse, Kar and MWNN take refuge with an order of monks who just happen to be there. [It's possible that MWNN knew of these monks (especially since the monks are training to take on the Bulletproof Monk position) but it wasn't mentioned before, so it just seems a little too convenient.]

Kar makes friends (in his own way) by shaking hands with a monk that turns into an attempt to break each others' fingers.

MWNN indicates he is considering Kar for the Bulletproof Monk position to the lead monk and again it is mentioned that Kar has potential. [You know, I remember my report cards saying I "had potential" and it was almost never a positive comment about my character...]

Bad Girl drops by the bad kung fu cinema looking for Kar and leaves her name (as 'Bad Girl' - no reason to give away a plot point yet), number and apparently address for him to contact her at.

Kar and MWNN have a wire fu training session. MWNN looks bemused and drops more flawed wisdom on Kar. The bad guys show up, supported this time by a helicopter with mounted minigun. [Obviously they have a permit for this, since at no time do the police show up to investigate a low-flying craft that is firing off a hundred rounds a second within a populated city block. Perhaps this is a common event in this universe, so nobody bothers reporting it.] Anyway, the bad guys appear to want both MWNN and Kar dead at this point since they expend a lot of ammo trying to put them down. Since they shoot like Stormtroopers, however, neither of our protagonists is in any danger.

Kar manages to lose the Scroll of the Ultimate through little fault of his own [in fact, I'd say he was lucky not to lose his leg as well given what happens]. Blondie shows up to pick up the scroll and returns triumphant to Bad Guy Headquarters.

MWNN and Kar duck into a cab and after a character moment, MWNN reveals what is going on to Kar.

At the same time Old Nazi is reading to scroll to find out it contains... a recipe for chicken soup.

MWNN reveals he has tattooed the scroll on his body and mind. [This is actually a great idea, given the number of times he has lost the scroll in this movie - god knows how many times he has lost it over his 60 years as Bulletproof Monk!]

Blondie shows up at the cinema looking for Kar and because she is evil she also kills the cinema owner. Shortly after [supposedly - the film's chronology here gets a bit iffy] Kar and MWNN arrive at the cinema to find the dead owner. MWNN feels bad about this and leaves Kar in order to 'protect' him [but in reality it would make him an easier target. The bad guys know his association with the MWNN, so wouldn't they still go after Kar? They are evil, so they may also just do it for kicks. However, it shows MWNN is noble, or something].

Kar isn't so lightly brushed off however, packing up his stuff and arriving at the Warehouse Temple, looking for the MWNN. MWNN is there [fortunately], reminiscing. This is all cut short when the bad guys arrive - an evil monk wants the scroll for himself and tipped them off. MWNN and Kar escape, but the other monks are captured.

Back at Headquarters, the monks are tied into a Mad Scientist Torture Machine built by the Old Nazi. The evil monk is also strapped in [which just goes to show you can't trust Nazis] and he is used to show the machine does ... something. It might suck out your mind, but this isn't made very clear. However, the machine is obviously EEE-vil and uses lots of pretty graphics and one of our protagonists is bound to get stuck in it.

Kar and MWNN show up at Bad Girl's place. After getting past the guards [which is ridiculously easy given what we find out is inside] Kar defies gravity while MWNN looks on, bemused. Once inside, Kar comes across Bad Girl and they fight [as love interests in a martial arts film are bound to do].

After the fight it turns out that Bad Girl's real name is Jade (thus Kar has met another prophecy!) and that she is a mafia princess who obviously enjoys slumming it. All conversations are cut short by the bad guys crashing the place and making off with MWNN. [Again, I draw your attention to the incompetent guards - they haven't stopped anyone getting into the house grounds and I doubt the bad guys were as subtle about it as our protagonists were. I would have thought the mafia would have been able to hire better guards, but obviously not.]

Kar and Bad Girl go after the bad guys. [Bad Girl turns into Mafia Princess Action Barbie, complete with explosives and bulletproof van - just perfect for trips to the mall or assaulting Nazi headquarters.]

In a completely unnecessary scene between MWNN and Blondie (whose name turns out to be Nina) we have some stomach churning sexual innuendo thrown about. The audience is then thankful to see the movie cut to Kar and Bad Girl having a character moment, with these crazy kids obviously falling in love. [Actually, after the MWNN / Blondie scene, anything was preferable.]

Old Nazi and MWNN finally meet. MWNN looks bemused. Old Nazi starts to read the Scroll of the Ultimate (lifted from the tattoos on MWNN's body). As he reads, Old Nazi turns into Naziman, becoming younger and more powerful.

Bad Girl's truck drives into Nazi headquarters and gets shot-up. However it was all a ruse! Bad Girl and Kar aren't in the truck! This is obviously meant to distract us from the fact that when the truck blows up, it probably kills about 10 men. [Given the lack of death in this film to this point, these deaths (although deserved, since they are henchmen of a Nazi) are surprising. Also note that the henchmen stand in a semi-circle to fire bullets into the truck, so perhaps their deaths (due to stupidity) were a matter of time anyway.]

Meanwhile, Bad Girl and Kar make their way through the sewers. They run into some armed guards, but Kar uses annoying MWNN philosophy to confuse them long enough to beat them up.[The henchmen here obey Ken Begg's Rule of Guns and helpfully let our martial arts heroes get close enough to knock them out, rather than just shoot them.]

Naziman completes reading the parts of the Scroll he has, but finds it incomplete. It turns out that MWNN memorised the final part. This displeases Naziman, who beats on MWNN a bit.

Bad Girl and Blondie meet up in the sewers for a pedestrian catfight. [Good thing Blondie didn't bring a gun or else things could have ended very differently.]

Meanwhile, Kar gets washed into the torture room and rescue MWNN, mostly by accident. Naziman is all powered up, meaning things aren't going smoothly for our protagonists. MWNN has to sacrifice himself to save Kar [which again reinforces Kar's position as someone who "has potential" but is mostly useless]. The fight moves out on the roof, with Kar thankfully becoming incapacitated for a while, allowing MWNN to do his thing.

Bad Girl rescues the monks still trapped in the Torture Machine. Good thing she's around to do all the work!

Kar gets back into the fight that of course leads to him becoming a hostage. Naziman issues a "tell me the secret or I kill the boy!" ultimatums to MWNN, but MWNN instead gives a few words of inspiration to Kar. This gives Kar the [experience? confidence? knowledge? inspiration?] something he needs to beat Naziman. MWNN stops Naziman from plunging from the building but after a few "I am Evil!" statements, Naziman falls anyway. He hits some power cables on the way down. Surely that must have killed him!

MWNN indicates that Kar has met the third prophecy [which he really, really didn't], making him eligible for the Bulletproof Monk role. MWNN passes on the position (more wind and lights) and things look rosy... until Naziman shows up and shoots Bad Girl! Kar uses his new powers to beat on Naziman, who is finally killed by a statue falling on him [meaning it wasn't Kar who killed him, so he isn't a murderer, so the audience can still like him, okay?].

MWNN then reveals that both Bad Girl and Kar fulfilled the prophecies together, so both are now (co-)Bulletproof Monks! Look, Bad Girl caught the bullet that was fired at her! [Oh, be still my beating heart at the shock of it all!]

The movie ends with MWNN giving half of the memorised scroll passages to Kar and half to Bad Girl. Kar comes up with an explanation for the hot dog and bun question that seems to make little sense, but MWNN agrees with it. [I think MWNN is now on holiday and just doesn't care any more so says yes to get Kar off his back.]

Overall this is an okay film. It doesn't really hit any great highs but doesn't have too many lows either. Chow Yun Fat looks bemused through most of the picture - perhaps he is thinking about how much he is being paid during his scenes. He's also the best thing in this movie, which perhaps adds to his amusement. The wire fu is pretty good for the most part and if you can turn your brain off. "Bulletproof Monk" isn't the worst film to waste some time watching.

However, don't be fooled by the lack of hard criticism above - "Bulletproof Monk" is a pretty bland movie. It has a formulaic plot, stock characters and lots of things just happen because the script makes it so. It's the superhero film equivalent of painting by numbers - it may end up looking okay, but there is no spark, no originality to it. In fact, if it wasn't for Mista Funktastic, I probably wouldn't have remembered anything about this movie for more than a day after seeing it.

Having never read the comic this is based on, I don't know for sure. However, the DVD came with a feature about the conversion of Bulletproof Monk from page to screen. It looks like the producers kept the main concept (ie a Bulletproof Monk, martial arts and guns) but changed everything else when making the movie.

Which makes you wonder why they bothered. Sure, I know it happens all the time, but for someone to buy a license to a comic book property, then strip out everything that makes it identifiable as that property, just makes you wonder what they are thinking. I'm sure the license holder enjoys the cash they get from it, but it must be a heart-rending experience to see something you've created crushed and cut beyond recognition.

Bulletproof Monk is not great, but it's okay in a bland kind of way.

Between Nazis, helicopters with miniguns and bad Zen philosophy / prophecies, there are a number of moments that will leave you shaking your head. Also, it scores a point for Mista Funktastic himself!

Date of review: 1 June 2004