Movie Notes: Bulletproof Monk
= 1 star
Starring Yun-Fat Chow, Seann William Scott, Jaime King
Directed by Paul Hunter
Synopsis
Sixty years ago, a martial-arts monk (Chow Yun-Fat) is appointed guardian of a mysterious scroll with life-prolonging powers. In the present day, the monk has chosen Kar (Seann William Scott) as a new guardian and apprentice. Meanwhile, evil people search for the scroll, seeking to possess its mystical powers.
The Good
- Yun-Fat Chow is remarkably solid — a good sport despite all the stupidity going on around him.
- A few cool fight scenes with crazy wire work.
The Bad
- Seann William Scott, better known as Stilfer from American Pie, is awkwardly miscast as a martial arts student.
- Feels like a lame hodgepodge of martial arts, buddy comedy, fantasy, and Indiana Jones wanna-be questing.
- The tragically cheesy plot just gets more and more ridiculous, with an elderly Dick Cheney-esque German guy, meaningless pseudo-mystical advice, and the obligatory hot Russian mafia princess Jade (Jamie King) who pulls some tragically funny martial arts moves on a living room floor.
Conclusion
As with A Guy Thing: don’t waste your time. For martial arts comedy, may I whole-heartedly recommend The Karate Kid. I barely got through Bulletproof Monk and enjoyed the act of deleting the iTunes movie file more than the film itself.
IMDB: Bulletproof Monk
Wikipedia: Bulletproof Monk
Rotten Tomatoes: Bulletproof Monk
So what you’re saying is that a Seann William Scott movie could be bad.…
Never!
I mean, he was so amazing in those two movies he did with the Rock.
Heh — he just needs to be cast in the right role, like one that demands a lot of crazy faces and having sex with food. He would have been great in Soul Plane.
it wasn’t all bad