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75It has a life and style that other buddy action movies lack
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70Lightweight but delightful martial-arts romp.
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70Not surprisingly based on a comic book series by Brett Lewis and R.A. Jones (whom pic fails to credit), pic hurtles along at a pace designed by vet music vid and ad helmer Paul Hunter to engage short attention spans.
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60It’s a film that walks a fine-line between serious superhero flick and slapstick, giving the audience a conglomerate of great martial arts moments intertwined with some very funny dialogue and impetus.
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60Too much seriousness can be fatal to a picture like this one, since it impedes the efficient delivery of dumb laughter and easy thrills.
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50The fight scenes in Bulletproof Monk are not as inventive as some I've seen (although the opening fight on a rope bridge is so well done that it raises expectations it cannot fulfill).
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50First-time director Paul Hunter delivers a quick-cut, loud movie that betrays his MTV roots -- but then again, the script never demands that he do much more than exactly that.
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The worst sin is the way the film borrows and corrupts the gravity-defying action style of Yun-Fat's international hit, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."
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50Action star Chow Yun-Fat's latest is as thin as the buzz cut he sports in Bulletproof Monk.
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50The story's entire foundation is based upon a plot hole so gargantuan that anyone not suffering a brain cramp will identify it at once.
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50It’s a testament to Chow's star power that, even with an accent more than casually reminiscent of Elmer Fudd's, he comes off charming, handsome and cool in a movie as ridiculous as Bulletproof Monk.
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50Some reliably vertiginous fight sequences (rope bridge, rooftop signage) and modest flight experiments liven up the mix, but for all the leads' individual appeal, they seem to occupy slightly different films.
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50It's pretty good fun, once it gets going, but still makes some of the same mistakes that have plagued other Hollywood films that interpolate the concepts of Hong Kong action.
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50Began life as a comic book, and screenwriters Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris, ever respectful of that lineage, have not allowed the film's dialogue or plot points to rise above their cartoonish origins.
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One of those motley movies that borrows from just about everywhere.
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42As ungainly in its jammed-together East-meets-West-ness as Steven Seagal in a yoga pose.
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40So formulaic it starts to fade from memory before the last punch is thrown.
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40A fair amount of visual panache, but the fight scenes are routine, the humor juvenile, and the Toronto locales rendered drab through muddy cinematography.
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38The picture's a dud... Instead of Chow's gravitas rubbing off on the kid, Scott's dude-ness dilutes Chow's authority.
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38Indeed a rip-off - a rehash of Hong Kong superstar Chow's greatest celluloid moments with an overlay of Hollywood action cliches, youth-flick silliness, and ah-so stereotypes.
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38Flashy, forgettable fluff.
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38A plot so preposterous it could only have emerged from the underground comic world.
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38No visual style, amateur effects.
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Most surprising (and disappointing) is the film's lack of humor. Scott, who has a huge following and has developed a lively comic persona, never seems in on the joke.
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30Monk would probably make a nice rental on a dull evening, with some kind of salty snack and a drinking-game accompaniment. (Drink whenever Scott cries, "Oh, shit!")
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30It never makes much sense.
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25Relentlessly stupid.
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20Sadly, it's yet another intercultural mishmash that hopes for its iconic star's charisma to overcome a dire script, cardboard characters, indifferently directed action scenes, and an atrocious villain buried under layers of unconvincing old-man makeup.
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20Yeah, they made a ton of junky movies in Hong Kong, but those were dazzlingly fluid and high-flying junky movies. This American retread has the same sort of hack plot but none of the bravura. It makes them look like monkeys, and not bulletproof ones.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 6 out of 15
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Mixed: 4 out of 15
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Negative: 5 out of 15
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