Strong and Moving!

A Major Disappointment

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This was coming off streaming in a couple of days and some of the reviews intrigued me, so I decided to give it a try. A short and sweet review would be that this is basically very well- done good-natured dumb fun. At this point the whole "chosen one" thing has been done to death by it seems every major religion and countless works of fiction--it seems to appeal to some sort simplistic desire deeply embedded in the minds of a great number of people, so it just keeps on rolling along.This one at least does the bit with an optimistic spirit and a little twist at the end. Still, enough is enough. While this particular plot device often produces a warm emotional feeling (as it does here), it's pretty immature and drains complexity and subtlety out of stories. Also, on an unrelated tack, why are the Nazis always the bad guys?

Based on a underground comic book, Bulletproof Monk is not only one of the worst movies ever made, it's also one of the worst comic book adaptations in years. I'm not going to even go into detail how awesomely bad this film is, I'm just gonna point out the many things that it fails at: Character development, incoherent plot, no thought or ideas put into it's completely vague and banal script, very poor and uninspiring marital art choreography, horrendous acting, and pretty much everything else that makes films of this type. And I can never understand why they even bother to make this film in the first place if the end product doesn't deliver. So in all aspects, Bulletproof Monk is one of the worst comic book adaptations made. Watch it on a rainy day if you want but if the weather is nice, then you're better off doing something else in your spare time.Not worth it.

This movie has it all! Wire-Fu! Nazis! Monkey-attacks to the face! Stifler!!! (?!) Magical Subway Unscrew-the-Screw Kung-Fu! Ball-Hungry Subway Bodybuilder Gangs! Racial Cleansing! Genocide! Too Cheap to Crash a Helicopter! Crazy Monk BSDM! Russian Mafia Princesses! With Semtex, No Less! Nazis-- With Jedi Mind Tricks-- That Bite! Statue Homicide! Oh YEAH! If you believe hard enough, you can fly, or alternatively, turn this pile of crap into a diamond. Personally I loved it: I haven't seen a movie this humorously bad since Dante's Peak. If it was re-shot with paper cutouts I probably would have mistaken it for South Park.Downside: you'll have to watch The Replacement Killers three times in a row before you'll take Chow Yun-Fat seriously again.

I don't think I was in the audience this movie was intended for. In the early scenes they are somewhere underground in Manhattan and a bunch of delinquent punk thugs are picking on one of our soon to be heroes, a super-pickpocket.Mr. Pickpocket is a martial arts expert. Where did he learn? Running a movie projector at a run down Asian movie theater in NYC.He bumps into the monk, literally, and steals the scroll, briefly. Next thing you know, the self-taught martial arts pickpocket is the monk's sidekick.Now IMDb says this movie is based on a comic book. So was Barbarella. I really like Barbarella. This movie doesn't have the same staying power, but it provides a couple hours of distraction.It is moderately interesting to watch the martial arts moves and try to guess how much the actors actually know. But when they go floating up into the air, defying gravity, and rotating around, I say who cares? Why do movies these days always include such reality-busting nonsense? On the other hand, my cat was glued to the set; she's actually pretty good at jumping up into the air and spinning like a top, so I guess she was interested in the technique.The only reason I decided to watch it on cable was Yun-Fat Chow. He is such a first-rate actor that it is interesting to watch him even in this fluff.This is really an Asian-American Raiders of the Lost Ark type movie. Yun-Fat Chow is really a fine actor and should get more solid roles in Hollywood. Hey, Spielberg, wouldn't Yun-Fat go well with Harrison Ford in a movie?So who is this movie intended for? I would say the teen to 20s pop-think crowd. Either that, or cats. The rest of the acting wasn't bad, but Yun-Fat is the only reason a serious moviegoer would find this movie interesting.