Review: Bulletproof Monk.

Bulletproof Monk is a 2003 action comedy directed by Paul Hunter and stars acting legend Chow Yun-Fat and Seann William Scott.

The film, loosely based around the comic book, features a nameless monk (Fat) who protects a scroll containing limitless power and seeks a martial arts film loving pickpocket named Kar (Scott) as his new successor in guarding the scroll.

"I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it." Roger Ebert said about North, and while I've never seen North, I feel the same with Bulletproof Monk.

I really wanted to like this film, I really did, I've seen my fair share and even enjoyed a couple of awful movies. But this? This film just sucks.

Almost the entire film relies heavily on the performances of it's two main leads, who play very charming and charismatic characters (half of Fat's screen time is him looking smug as hell), and are really one of three things I enjoyed about this film.

I enjoyed both of their performances a lot, if it weren't for their performances (primarily Fat's) I would've most likely just walked out half an hour in.

Maybe it's because I was/still am sick when I watched it, but the action is just so nauseating. Look, the action isn't that bad, it has that wuxia martial arts style where people jump 10 feet in the air and defy all laws of physics.

And I do enjoy that type of action, I love Jackie Chan's Forbidden Kingdom it's one of my favorite Jackie Chan films, but when each fight scene is accompanied by 10-20 camera angles per second, it holds down all potential it had to work and only made me dizzy throughout it all.

The rope bridge fight, and really the first 10-15 minutes of this film is the best part. It has a lot of energy going through it and the first fight scene with Funktastic's crew to Tall Cans in the Air really had me invested, but the more the film went on the more it dragged on and the more energy it lost until, 30 or so minutes in the film just feels like a paper weight.

Hell, I'll even argue I enjoyed the film up to the 50 minute mark, but after that I loathed watching this film.

The only time this film gets good again is the final 15-20 minutes, and no it's not because of "Finally this film's over!" it's because it does actually get interesting again.

It doesn't live up to the first few minutes at all, but it gets close to it. I did enjoy seeing the Monk get beat up and finally fight someone on his level again, but it felt held down by all of my previous gripes about this film.

Bulletproof Monk is full of awful cliches, predictable dialogue and even more predictable plot twists, and really the best part of this film is it's soundtrack. It's one of the only few good things this film had done right.

I don't know if I need a rewatch on the off chance something didn't click for me the first time, but man, I do NOT recommend this film.

It wasn't fun awful, just awful.

That's all for now, Love and Peace!