n 1943 Tibet, a nameless monk (Chow) inherits from his apparently ageless mentor the sacred duty of protecting the Scroll of Sublime Truth. Whoever reads the scroll gains absolute power. But no one must get near it, the master tells his apprentice. "Mankind is not ready for such power," he says.
No sooner has he assumed his holy duty than the Monk witnesses the slaughter of his brothers by Struker (Karel Roden), a ruthless Nazi bent on acquiring the scroll. In the nick of time, the Monk retrieves the scroll, takes a bullet and vanishes.
Sixty years later, young Kar (Scott) makes a living picking pockets in the subways of a nameless American city. As the cops close in, he runs. At the same time, in the same city, mysterious operatives find the Monk, still as youthful as ever, and give chase. Kar and the Monk run into each other on a subway platform, team up to save a young girl and manage to give their various pursuers the slip.
Kar steals the scroll from the Monk, only to find himself at the mercy of Mr. Funktastic (Marcus Jean Pirae), a gang leader with a kick-ass girlfriend, called only Bad Girl (King). With an impressive display of martial-arts skills, Kar almost defeats Funktastic's minions. With Bad Girl's help, he gets away. All the while, the Monk has been observing.
Back at Kar's crib in an old Chinatown movie theater, the Monk gets his scroll back and offers to take Kar on as an apprentice, believing that he may be the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy.
But Nina (Victoria Smurfit) and her operatives have other ideas. And she's not alone. Her aging grandfather is none other than the nefarious Struker, still on a quest for the scroll and its promise of absolute power.
We're not in Woo territory anymore
There's a moment in Bulletproof Monk when first-time feature director Hunter pays homage to one of his producers, legendary action helmer John Woo. It comes midway in the film, when the nameless Monk backflips onto the roof of a car, catches 9mm pistols in each hand and twirls in a crouch, his coat flying behind him in slow motion as the camera swirls around. At the moment, the movie crackles to life, if only briefly: an echo of the potent pairing of Woo and Chow from their Hong Kong days. But that flame flickers out almost as quickly, as the Monk ejects the pistols' clips and tosses them away. With that motion, Chow reminds us that we're not in Woo land anymore.
As if we needed any reminder. Though Bulletproof Monk manages to coast along for much of the way on the considerable charm of Chow, it can't overcome the inherent lameness of its script, the bland acting of Scott or King and Hunter's apparent maladroitness with action. It goes without saying that Woo didn't have much input into the production once he and longtime partner Terence Chang acquired the comic on which the film is based and set the film up as a Chow vehicle.
That comic series has been completely rewritten to beef up the Monk's role, and fans of that cult series shouldn't expect a faithful adaptation. Rather, Bulletproof Monk plays like any of a number of similarly themed Hong Kong action movies, not to mention hero's journey tales from Star Wars to The Karate Kid. But aside from its premise, Monk brings nothing new to the genre and suffers in comparison to them.
In particular, Hunter seems to feel the need to overproduce the martial-arts battles, enhancing the flying feet and wire work with balletic camera movements, quick cuts and tight closeups. But that just muddies the fight scenes, making them difficult to track and robbing the audience of the opportunity to admire the elaborate choreography and expert stuntwork.
Beyond this, Reiff and Voris' script is riddled with cliches and cringeworthy lines, as when Scott tells King in midfight, "You're just so damn beautiful," or when Monk delivers any of a dozen fortune-cookie aphorisms ("Water which is too pure has no fish.")
