A monk and a pickpocket become unlikely allies in this action adventure story. Sixty years ago, a nameless monk (Chow Yun-Fat) was appointed the guardian of a mysterious scroll that grants remarkable powers to those who possess it. After six decades of traveling the world to protect the scroll, the monk must find someone new to assume the responsibility, but as fate would have it, the new caretaker turns out to be Kar (Seann William Scott), a scruffy and distinctly non-enlightened petty thief
living in San Francisco. As the monk attempts to educate Kar in the powers and responsibilities of the scroll and the ways of a monk's life, they discover they have a rival for the possession of the valuable scroll. As Kar and the monk fend off their mysterious adversary, they are aided by Bad Girl (Jaime King), a beautiful Russian mob affiliate with amazing martial arts skills and a vested interest in keeping the scroll in virtuous hands. Bulletproof Monk was based a comic book series published in 1999; Chow Yun-Fat's frequent collaborators John Woo and Terence Chang produced. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
They made a ton of junky movies in Hong Kong, but those were dazzlingly fluid and high-flying junky movies. This American retread has the same sort of hack plot but none of the bravura.
[T]he thing about the martial arts sequences -- you've got the great Chow Yun-Fat, but this thing is directed MTV style: cut here, cut there, close-up. So we can't really tell if he's doing stunts or if it's all tricks of camerawork.
Paul Hunter edits his action scenes so much that it's really difficult to see anything spectacular, and the special effects aren't anything to drool over.
Chow Yun-Fat delivers stylish action and finally shows American audiences a sense of humor, but watching Stifler get his kung fu on is just a little too hard to swallow.
What a weird movie, it's a modern kung-fu fantasy/comedy. While that's pretty brave to attempt to make that plot work, it just wasn't executed properly and it just didn't have enough personality. I think what makes it work the most is the buddy cop antics between Seann William Scott and Chow Yun Fat, aside from that it
falls pretty flat.
I really enjoyed this corny action movie, and I wish that it was longer than it was, and improved on it's little flaws, because I really wanted to love this one, but I still really liked it!
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