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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Chow Yun-Fat battles aging Nazis and trains an American disciple in this lightweight but delightful martial-arts romp.
Apr 16, 2003 | You couldn't make a case for "Bulletproof Monk" as a superior example of movie craftsmanship. The narrative is as slapdash as it is in most big-budget action movies. The images lack luster (surprising since the cinematographer is Stefan Czapsky, who has done striking work for Tim Burton and on Danny DeVito's wonderful "Matilda"), and the martial arts sequences have been edited (by Robert K. Lambert) with typical Cuisinart busyness. So why is "Bulletproof Monk" so much more enjoyable than the usual run-of-the-mill action junk? Why does it send you out of the theater in such a good mood?
"Bulletproof Monk" absolutely refuses to take itself seriously, and it's precisely how it refuses to take itself seriously that makes all the difference. Striking an ironic stance has become the way for commercial movies to get away with being crap; simply acknowledging cliché has become a way for movies to claim that they are superior to the rest of the junk out there.
Yet "Bulletproof Monk" never winks at its outlandish plot twists and even more outlandish dialogue. The filmmakers, director Paul Hunter and screenwriters Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris, don't apologize for making a far-fetched action movie. And for all the haphazard qualities of "Bulletproof Monk," what they've come up with is a genuine, unembarrassed example of the kind of naiveté that can return us to the movies as a place of make-believe.
The presence of Chow Yun-Fat links "Bulletproof Monk" to Hong Kong movies. American movies have tried for years to come up with equivalents to the kinetic genre-scrambling of Hong Kong movies (which in turn are indebted to Hollywood). They've appropriated Hong Kong directors and stars, but often the result feels even more soulless than the usual Hollywood product. The stunts and effects and hyperbolic firepower lifted from Hong Kong, instead of liberating Hollywood pictures, only made them seem more calculated. (The exception is "The Matrix," which seemed to be inventing a whole new genre as you watched it.) Conversely, a self-awareness has started to creep into Hong Kong movies, like the recent "Fulltime Killer" in which super hit man Andy Lau stages his killings as homages to action movies. (He pins a guy's hand to a bar with a fork and berates him for not having seen Alain Delon in "Le Samourai," and dons a Bill Clinton mask to reference the bank robbers in "Point Break.")
"Bulletproof Monk"
Directed by Paul Hunter
Starring Chow Yun-Fat, Seann William Scott, Jaime King, Karel Roden, Victoria Smurfit
What distinguishes Hong Kong movies at their best (and sometimes even when they're just passable) is that they don't feel as if they've been made by or for people who have become jaded. Sometimes, their nearly incoherent story lines actually make it easier to slip into them on a make-believe level. I don't want to inflate my pleasure in them by making claims for all of the Hong Kong pictures I've enjoyed as works of art (though I'd certainly make that claim for some). But collectively Hong Kong cinema has been a high-water mark for the art of being a moviegoer. To put it simply, Hong Kong movies have allowed us to be audiences again, to believe in what's on the screen for the few hours we sit in our seats because the people on-screen believe in it.
In the great movie renaissance of the 1970s, filmmakers and audiences moved beyond genre films. Our current predicament is far worse; directors aren't challenging the conventions of genre but they haven't mastered the craft of genre. The spirit of fun seems gone from many commercial movies, replaced by the crassest kind of profiteering.
In the last 15 years or so, Hong Kong filmmakers have often seemed to be the only ones doing the classic Hollywood genres with anything like the spirit of classic Hollywood. I don't just mean much-praised pictures like John Woo's "The Killer" ("Magnificent Obsession" as a gangster film) and "Hard-Boiled," but also lesser-known ones like Peter Chan's romantic drama "Comrades: Almost a Love Story," featuring a great movie-star performance from Maggie Cheung, and Tsui Hark's "A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon," which puts nearly every recent American historical melodrama to shame. Watching these movies, for me, at least, has been like discovering that parts of your heritage you believed had vanished are actually alive and flourishing in a foreign land. You feel at first disoriented and then right at home.
This may help to explain why you can walk into "Bulletproof Monk" in a foul mood (like I did) and come out feeling refreshed and happy. Chow Yun-Fat plays the Monk With No Name (a nod to Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name, in the Sergio Leone westerns), who has been protecting an ancient scroll for 60 years. The scroll stops time for whoever protects it, giving them the strength and appearance of youth, and will also allow whoever reads it to control the world in whatever way they choose. Since 1942, the Monk has been on the run from a now decrepit Nazi (Karel Roden, as familiar and terrible as all the hissing Nazis from '40s movies), who wants the sacred parchment to regain his own youth and to establish the master race on earth.
