Bulletproof Monk was a poor execution of what seemed to be a pretty decent plot. I'd like to read the original comic it was based on in the hopes that it would live up to the expectation the movie trailers set. Let's be straight here I wasn't expecting Shakespeare. I mean common it's got stiffler in it for heavens sake. It does however also have Chow Yun Fat and I am typically satisfied with his work. He has the capacity to be a very good actor and I've been pleased with his recent jaunt into the Kung Fu Genre (He's a Chinese action start, not a Kung Fu star. Think of him as a Chinese Gvnr arnie.)
this movie however fails to hit any marks.
Running chronologically the special effects are rather second rate. They might have been good when we started seeing that level in Star Trek but these days teenagers are knocking that out on their home PCs and posting mini movies to newgrounds. (slight exaggeration.)
It’s really in the physics that they lack. The movie opens on an image of a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. The chrysalis is attached to a knot on some rope structure. The rope starts to bob. Looking at the knot which looks like it was made out of frosting for some cake all I can think is “I really hope that’s not supposed to be load bearing.” Because it’s perfectly round even though it’s holding up a rope suspension bridge. What follows is a rather poorly choreographed and even more poorly computer graphics enhanced fight scene between Chow Yun Fat’s character and his master (Lame ending to the fight scene BTW.) After this we go through some pretty typical master student “you are ready” talk. No big deal about the dialog either way UNTIL… this is when I realized that I had the complete wrong impression about this movie when I rented it thinking it would be a pretty decent HK style American movie. Until... Chow’s master starts to explain to him about “The scroll of the ultimate.” If that isn’t the lamest name for a scroll that’s been under the protection of Shaolin fighting Chinese Tibetan monks (suspending disbelief for this was actually pretty easy) you’ve ever heard then I wanna hear about it. That pretty much sums up the level of everything that went into the movie right there. The scroll of the ultimate. Follow that with some pathetic acting/makeup effects combination (Note: When they makeup age you to like 80+ years it’s time to act old. If you deliver your dialog the same way you did when you where supposed to be 30 it’s gonna look stupid) and probably the most tired villain of all time, Nazis, and the movie just doesn’t get any better from there. I have more terrible things to say about it but I won’t bother.
Now, on the plus side:
Almost everyone in the movie is pretty, even stiffler is pretty hot especially when he takes off his shirt. They rustled up some attractive actors.
There’s a character in it called Mr. Funktastic, and that’s funny to my I don’t know why.
John Woo and Terrence Change have done a crapton of martial arts movies and they both believe in getting the actors into training as far in advance of the movie as possible. All the fighters actually looked like they knew how to fight. (Chow does a great job of that both in this and in crouching tiger.)
Now Wei Tung was the head choreographer for this movie (which took a lot of work to find out I finally found it on Chow’s site. Looking for other movies done by him I find exactly one.
Hero. All I can think is that one of three things happened. A it’s a different Wei Tung (pretty likely) B there where a bunch of choreographers and the others screwed everything up. C The choreography was fantastic and it was completely destroyed in editing.
Who knows, I don’t have all the answers
-Aaron
Oh yeah, coolest thing about this movie..
the comic it was based on. Gotham Copra was the story editor. Yup, Depak Chopra's kid.
No comments:
Post a Comment