It's pretty hard to say if 2003's "Bulletproof Monk" is supposed to be a straightforward action adventure or a parody of an action adventure. With Chow Yun-Fat playing a character known only as a "monk with no name" (shades of Clint), a secondary character named Diesel (shades of Vin), stunts that look like takeoffs on "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," and a butterfly emerging from a cocoon reminding us of the "little grasshopper" in the old "Kung Fu" television series, who can be sure?
Our first clue to the nature of the film comes when we read the opening credits and discover the story and characters are based on the cult creations of Michael Yanover in his Flypaper Press comic book. Then, the movie's first scene involves a fight on a narrow suspension bridge over a deep gorge that looks for all the world like a shot from a video game.
You know, John, I think it might be the mindset. When I saw the two-gun photo of Chow Yun-Fat on the cover--not exactly your standard martial arts hardware--I was ready for a comic-style film in the tradition of all those superhero flicks that hinge on how closely they're able to approximate the tone of the comic book.
The whole movie has the air of a comic book about it, from the silliness of the plot to the evilness of the villains to the invincibility of the heroes. Now, don't get me wrong. I have nothing against comic books or this particular comic book; but I am reviewing a movie here, and the movie becomes awfully frivolous and awfully tiresome awfully fast. If you're in the mood for nonstop fighting, kicking, punching, and killing, with a dollop of juvenile humor thrown in, "Bulletproof Monk" may be just what you're looking for. As for the rest of us, it's the same old, same old, and not much more.
Agreed.
The idea here is that Tibetan monks have been preserving and guarding since time immemorial an ancient artifact, the "Scroll of the Ultimate," an object of unlimited power. Anyone who reads the scroll out loud in its entirety gains eternal life and the power to control the world. Talk about the pen being mightier than the sword. An individual monk guards the scroll for sixty years, during which time he becomes invulnerable and never ages; then he relinquishes his guardianship to another, chosen monk, who stays young while the former guy withers up.
Our story begins in 1943 as the guardianship is being handed to Chow Yun-Fat's character, who must give up his identity and become for the next sixty years a monk with no name. For the duration of the review, we'll simply call him the Monk. Immediately fast forward sixty years to the present, and it's time for the Monk to find a successor, all the while trying to dodge a group of ex-Nazis who are out to get the scroll. That's about it. Half the film is about the succession of guardianship, half about the fight with the baddies. It's mostly mindless motion.
What slapped me on the face like a cheap after-shave, though, was the blatant similarities to "Raiders of the Lost Ark." It isn't just that the Nazis storm the Temple of Sublime Truth looking for yet another artifact that Hitler believed would allow him to control the world (although in this film, it isn't Hitler, it's a loose cannon Nazi officer who wants the power for himself). It was the WAY that the Nazi behaved. The tone and the confrontation, even the background music was an unmistakable nod in the direction of Indiana Jones, and that, of course, reinforced the comic tone. Then we jump forward 60 years and leave Tibet for New York. Why? We don't know.
The new potential guardian comes in an unlikely form: A wily young thief named Kar (Seann William Scott), with a heart of gold. The Monk feels Kar is the right person for the job because the kid fulfills some venerable prophecies. Kar wants no part of it. But to the Monk the kid seems to be perfect, especially as he is a passingly good martial artist, something that comes in handy when you're protecting the most valuable object in the history of the world. Kar learned his martial arts skills at the Golden Palace, a local movie theater, where he imitated the actors on screen. And I'm a water buffalo because I watch the Nature Channel.
Funny. Now move along, before I get out my cattle prod.
Joining forces with the Monk and Kar in helping to defend the scroll is Jade (Jaime King), the beautiful daughter of a rich and powerful but now incarcerated mobster. She, too, is a martial artist, and how she becomes involved in this affair is a story unto itself. Suffice it to say, it has to do with Kar's attraction to her. Scott, incidentally, plays the same brash, flippant fellow he played in "American Pie," and King is, well, beautiful. Neither character displays a strong enough personality to carry the movie, nor does Chow Yun-Fat, for that matter, since he does little but look calm and reassured most of the time.
So, it's up to the villains to do their part to keep us interested in the goings on. The main evildoer is Strucker (Karel Roden), an ex-Nazi who has been chasing after the Monk for sixty years and just caught up with him. He wants to rule the world and cleanse it of inferior beings. Or inferior beans, I wasn't sure. He should start by eliminating comic-book villains. When Strucker finally gets his hands on the scroll's secret message and turns young again, he's stuck with the same bad haircut he had sixty years earlier. Doesn't seem fair. Equally evil is his granddaughter, Nina (Victoria Smurfit), the kind of dragon lady whose disposition could wilt flowers in a conservatory. They and their various henchmen liven things up, especially as Strucker has a penchant for weird, medieval torture devices in his subterranean basement, giving the set designer a field day.
See, this was the film's big misstep, as far as I'm concerned. It's one thing to offer up a subterranean, "Blade Runner" set in a post-apocalyptic world, but when commuters in 2003 are grabbing those subway hand-straps, as usual, it really seems jarring. I can see it working in a comic book, but it doesn't really blend into the rest of the narrative.
There are a couple of cute bits along the way, like Kar struggling to climb over a wall while the Monk walks around it, but mostly the humor is limited to the movie's corny, fortune-cookie style dialogue and its over-the-top, bullet-dodging action. Doors are never just broken open, they're knocked down! And our peace-loving Monk is not opposed to using an automatic weapon in each hand as well as kicking the living daylights out of his opponents.
And to be fair, there are a couple of nifty scenes, like the one where he does a backflip to avoid a speeding car, which then strikes the two guys chasing him. Their guns fly up in the air, and the Monk with No Name catches them, one in each hand, and starts blasting away like John Wayne. Again, tonally, it reminded me of the scene where Indiana Jones faces a scimitar-wielding assassin who goes through all these menacing moves, only to have Indy shrug, pull out his gun, and shoot the guy.
"Bulletproof Monk" may provide the expected antics of a comic book, but it seems a decided letdown for Chow Yun-Fat as his first film after "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."
Video:
On the DVD release, the colors are generally beautiful, thanks to the film's art director, but they do not always show up as well as we might hope. The focus is a tad soft, and the brilliance ranges from bright to dull, depending on the scene. The Blu-ray version is far more consistent, but it must be the master, because some of the conditions you describe exist here too. The color saturation isn't all that high and the black levels could have been stronger, but the sharpness is there throughout the film. None of the haloing or jittery lines that you saw in the SD version. In short, it's a big improvement. The 1080p picture (2.35:1 aspect ratio) was transferred to a 25-gig single-layer disc using MPEG-2 technology at 20MBPS.
Audio:
Once again, Blu-ray delivers dynamic sound, with the featured soundtrack a resonant and booming English DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio. Lesser options are English and French Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, with subtitles in English (CC) and Spanish. It sounds great, with plenty of rear-speaker action that gives the illusion of bullets whizzing over your couch.
Our first clue to the nature of the film comes when we read the opening credits and discover the story and characters are based on the cult creations of Michael Yanover in his Flypaper Press comic book. Then, the movie's first scene involves a fight on a narrow suspension bridge over a deep gorge that looks for all the world like a shot from a video game.
You know, John, I think it might be the mindset. When I saw the two-gun photo of Chow Yun-Fat on the cover--not exactly your standard martial arts hardware--I was ready for a comic-style film in the tradition of all those superhero flicks that hinge on how closely they're able to approximate the tone of the comic book.
The whole movie has the air of a comic book about it, from the silliness of the plot to the evilness of the villains to the invincibility of the heroes. Now, don't get me wrong. I have nothing against comic books or this particular comic book; but I am reviewing a movie here, and the movie becomes awfully frivolous and awfully tiresome awfully fast. If you're in the mood for nonstop fighting, kicking, punching, and killing, with a dollop of juvenile humor thrown in, "Bulletproof Monk" may be just what you're looking for. As for the rest of us, it's the same old, same old, and not much more.
Agreed.
The idea here is that Tibetan monks have been preserving and guarding since time immemorial an ancient artifact, the "Scroll of the Ultimate," an object of unlimited power. Anyone who reads the scroll out loud in its entirety gains eternal life and the power to control the world. Talk about the pen being mightier than the sword. An individual monk guards the scroll for sixty years, during which time he becomes invulnerable and never ages; then he relinquishes his guardianship to another, chosen monk, who stays young while the former guy withers up.
Our story begins in 1943 as the guardianship is being handed to Chow Yun-Fat's character, who must give up his identity and become for the next sixty years a monk with no name. For the duration of the review, we'll simply call him the Monk. Immediately fast forward sixty years to the present, and it's time for the Monk to find a successor, all the while trying to dodge a group of ex-Nazis who are out to get the scroll. That's about it. Half the film is about the succession of guardianship, half about the fight with the baddies. It's mostly mindless motion.
What slapped me on the face like a cheap after-shave, though, was the blatant similarities to "Raiders of the Lost Ark." It isn't just that the Nazis storm the Temple of Sublime Truth looking for yet another artifact that Hitler believed would allow him to control the world (although in this film, it isn't Hitler, it's a loose cannon Nazi officer who wants the power for himself). It was the WAY that the Nazi behaved. The tone and the confrontation, even the background music was an unmistakable nod in the direction of Indiana Jones, and that, of course, reinforced the comic tone. Then we jump forward 60 years and leave Tibet for New York. Why? We don't know.
The new potential guardian comes in an unlikely form: A wily young thief named Kar (Seann William Scott), with a heart of gold. The Monk feels Kar is the right person for the job because the kid fulfills some venerable prophecies. Kar wants no part of it. But to the Monk the kid seems to be perfect, especially as he is a passingly good martial artist, something that comes in handy when you're protecting the most valuable object in the history of the world. Kar learned his martial arts skills at the Golden Palace, a local movie theater, where he imitated the actors on screen. And I'm a water buffalo because I watch the Nature Channel.
Funny. Now move along, before I get out my cattle prod.
Joining forces with the Monk and Kar in helping to defend the scroll is Jade (Jaime King), the beautiful daughter of a rich and powerful but now incarcerated mobster. She, too, is a martial artist, and how she becomes involved in this affair is a story unto itself. Suffice it to say, it has to do with Kar's attraction to her. Scott, incidentally, plays the same brash, flippant fellow he played in "American Pie," and King is, well, beautiful. Neither character displays a strong enough personality to carry the movie, nor does Chow Yun-Fat, for that matter, since he does little but look calm and reassured most of the time.
So, it's up to the villains to do their part to keep us interested in the goings on. The main evildoer is Strucker (Karel Roden), an ex-Nazi who has been chasing after the Monk for sixty years and just caught up with him. He wants to rule the world and cleanse it of inferior beings. Or inferior beans, I wasn't sure. He should start by eliminating comic-book villains. When Strucker finally gets his hands on the scroll's secret message and turns young again, he's stuck with the same bad haircut he had sixty years earlier. Doesn't seem fair. Equally evil is his granddaughter, Nina (Victoria Smurfit), the kind of dragon lady whose disposition could wilt flowers in a conservatory. They and their various henchmen liven things up, especially as Strucker has a penchant for weird, medieval torture devices in his subterranean basement, giving the set designer a field day.
See, this was the film's big misstep, as far as I'm concerned. It's one thing to offer up a subterranean, "Blade Runner" set in a post-apocalyptic world, but when commuters in 2003 are grabbing those subway hand-straps, as usual, it really seems jarring. I can see it working in a comic book, but it doesn't really blend into the rest of the narrative.
There are a couple of cute bits along the way, like Kar struggling to climb over a wall while the Monk walks around it, but mostly the humor is limited to the movie's corny, fortune-cookie style dialogue and its over-the-top, bullet-dodging action. Doors are never just broken open, they're knocked down! And our peace-loving Monk is not opposed to using an automatic weapon in each hand as well as kicking the living daylights out of his opponents.
And to be fair, there are a couple of nifty scenes, like the one where he does a backflip to avoid a speeding car, which then strikes the two guys chasing him. Their guns fly up in the air, and the Monk with No Name catches them, one in each hand, and starts blasting away like John Wayne. Again, tonally, it reminded me of the scene where Indiana Jones faces a scimitar-wielding assassin who goes through all these menacing moves, only to have Indy shrug, pull out his gun, and shoot the guy.
"Bulletproof Monk" may provide the expected antics of a comic book, but it seems a decided letdown for Chow Yun-Fat as his first film after "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."
Video:
On the DVD release, the colors are generally beautiful, thanks to the film's art director, but they do not always show up as well as we might hope. The focus is a tad soft, and the brilliance ranges from bright to dull, depending on the scene. The Blu-ray version is far more consistent, but it must be the master, because some of the conditions you describe exist here too. The color saturation isn't all that high and the black levels could have been stronger, but the sharpness is there throughout the film. None of the haloing or jittery lines that you saw in the SD version. In short, it's a big improvement. The 1080p picture (2.35:1 aspect ratio) was transferred to a 25-gig single-layer disc using MPEG-2 technology at 20MBPS.
Audio:
Once again, Blu-ray delivers dynamic sound, with the featured soundtrack a resonant and booming English DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio. Lesser options are English and French Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, with subtitles in English (CC) and Spanish. It sounds great, with plenty of rear-speaker action that gives the illusion of bullets whizzing over your couch.
It's pretty hard to say if 2003's "Bulletproof Monk" is supposed to be a straightforward action adventure or a parody of an action adventure. With Chow Yun-Fat playing a character known only as a "monk with no name" (shades of Clint), a secondary character named Diesel (shades of Vin), stunts that look like takeoffs on "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," and a butterfly emerging from a cocoon reminding us of the "little grasshopper" in the old "Kung Fu" television series, who can be sure?
Our first clue to the nature of the film comes when we read the opening credits and discover the story and characters are based on the cult creations of Michael Yanover in his Flypaper Press comic book. Then, the movie's first scene involves a fight on a narrow suspension bridge over a deep gorge that looks for all the world like a shot from a video game.
You know, John, I think it might be the mindset. When I saw the two-gun photo of Chow Yun-Fat on the cover--not exactly your standard martial arts hardware--I was ready for a comic-style film in the tradition of all those superhero flicks that hinge on how closely they're able to approximate the tone of the comic book.
The whole movie has the air of a comic book about it, from the silliness of the plot to the evilness of the villains to the invincibility of the heroes. Now, don't get me wrong. I have nothing against comic books or this particular comic book; but I am reviewing a movie here, and the movie becomes awfully frivolous and awfully tiresome awfully fast. If you're in the mood for nonstop fighting, kicking, punching, and killing, with a dollop of juvenile humor thrown in, "Bulletproof Monk" may be just what you're looking for. As for the rest of us, it's the same old, same old, and not much more.
Agreed.
The idea here is that Tibetan monks have been preserving and guarding since time immemorial an ancient artifact, the "Scroll of the Ultimate," an object of unlimited power. Anyone who reads the scroll out loud in its entirety gains eternal life and the power to control the world. Talk about the pen being mightier than the sword. An individual monk guards the scroll for sixty years, during which time he becomes invulnerable and never ages; then he relinquishes his guardianship to another, chosen monk, who stays young while the former guy withers up.
Our story begins in 1943 as the guardianship is being handed to Chow Yun-Fat's character, who must give up his identity and become for the next sixty years a monk with no name. For the duration of the review, we'll simply call him the Monk. Immediately fast forward sixty years to the present, and it's time for the Monk to find a successor, all the while trying to dodge a group of ex-Nazis who are out to get the scroll. That's about it. Half the film is about the succession of guardianship, half about the fight with the baddies. It's mostly mindless motion.
What slapped me on the face like a cheap after-shave, though, was the blatant similarities to "Raiders of the Lost Ark." It isn't just that the Nazis storm the Temple of Sublime Truth looking for yet another artifact that Hitler believed would allow him to control the world (although in this film, it isn't Hitler, it's a loose cannon Nazi officer who wants the power for himself). It was the WAY that the Nazi behaved. The tone and the confrontation, even the background music was an unmistakable nod in the direction of Indiana Jones, and that, of course, reinforced the comic tone. Then we jump forward 60 years and leave Tibet for New York. Why? We don't know.
The new potential guardian comes in an unlikely form: A wily young thief named Kar (Seann William Scott), with a heart of gold. The Monk feels Kar is the right person for the job because the kid fulfills some venerable prophecies. Kar wants no part of it. But to the Monk the kid seems to be perfect, especially as he is a passingly good martial artist, something that comes in handy when you're protecting the most valuable object in the history of the world. Kar learned his martial arts skills at the Golden Palace, a local movie theater, where he imitated the actors on screen. And I'm a water buffalo because I watch the Nature Channel.
Funny. Now move along, before I get out my cattle prod.
Joining forces with the Monk and Kar in helping to defend the scroll is Jade (Jaime King), the beautiful daughter of a rich and powerful but now incarcerated mobster. She, too, is a martial artist, and how she becomes involved in this affair is a story unto itself. Suffice it to say, it has to do with Kar's attraction to her. Scott, incidentally, plays the same brash, flippant fellow he played in "American Pie," and King is, well, beautiful. Neither character displays a strong enough personality to carry the movie, nor does Chow Yun-Fat, for that matter, since he does little but look calm and reassured most of the time.
So, it's up to the villains to do their part to keep us interested in the goings on. The main evildoer is Strucker (Karel Roden), an ex-Nazi who has been chasing after the Monk for sixty years and just caught up with him. He wants to rule the world and cleanse it of inferior beings. Or inferior beans, I wasn't sure. He should start by eliminating comic-book villains. When Strucker finally gets his hands on the scroll's secret message and turns young again, he's stuck with the same bad haircut he had sixty years earlier. Doesn't seem fair. Equally evil is his granddaughter, Nina (Victoria Smurfit), the kind of dragon lady whose disposition could wilt flowers in a conservatory. They and their various henchmen liven things up, especially as Strucker has a penchant for weird, medieval torture devices in his subterranean basement, giving the set designer a field day.
See, this was the film's big misstep, as far as I'm concerned. It's one thing to offer up a subterranean, "Blade Runner" set in a post-apocalyptic world, but when commuters in 2003 are grabbing those subway hand-straps, as usual, it really seems jarring. I can see it working in a comic book, but it doesn't really blend into the rest of the narrative.
There are a couple of cute bits along the way, like Kar struggling to climb over a wall while the Monk walks around it, but mostly the humor is limited to the movie's corny, fortune-cookie style dialogue and its over-the-top, bullet-dodging action. Doors are never just broken open, they're knocked down! And our peace-loving Monk is not opposed to using an automatic weapon in each hand as well as kicking the living daylights out of his opponents.
And to be fair, there are a couple of nifty scenes, like the one where he does a backflip to avoid a speeding car, which then strikes the two guys chasing him. Their guns fly up in the air, and the Monk with No Name catches them, one in each hand, and starts blasting away like John Wayne. Again, tonally, it reminded me of the scene where Indiana Jones faces a scimitar-wielding assassin who goes through all these menacing moves, only to have Indy shrug, pull out his gun, and shoot the guy.
"Bulletproof Monk" may provide the expected antics of a comic book, but it seems a decided letdown for Chow Yun-Fat as his first film after "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."
Video:
On the DVD release, the colors are generally beautiful, thanks to the film's art director, but they do not always show up as well as we might hope. The focus is a tad soft, and the brilliance ranges from bright to dull, depending on the scene. The Blu-ray version is far more consistent, but it must be the master, because some of the conditions you describe exist here too. The color saturation isn't all that high and the black levels could have been stronger, but the sharpness is there throughout the film. None of the haloing or jittery lines that you saw in the SD version. In short, it's a big improvement. The 1080p picture (2.35:1 aspect ratio) was transferred to a 25-gig single-layer disc using MPEG-2 technology at 20MBPS.
Audio:
Once again, Blu-ray delivers dynamic sound, with the featured soundtrack a resonant and booming English DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio. Lesser options are English and French Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, with subtitles in English (CC) and Spanish. It sounds great, with plenty of rear-speaker action that gives the illusion of bullets whizzing over your couch.
Our first clue to the nature of the film comes when we read the opening credits and discover the story and characters are based on the cult creations of Michael Yanover in his Flypaper Press comic book. Then, the movie's first scene involves a fight on a narrow suspension bridge over a deep gorge that looks for all the world like a shot from a video game.
You know, John, I think it might be the mindset. When I saw the two-gun photo of Chow Yun-Fat on the cover--not exactly your standard martial arts hardware--I was ready for a comic-style film in the tradition of all those superhero flicks that hinge on how closely they're able to approximate the tone of the comic book.
The whole movie has the air of a comic book about it, from the silliness of the plot to the evilness of the villains to the invincibility of the heroes. Now, don't get me wrong. I have nothing against comic books or this particular comic book; but I am reviewing a movie here, and the movie becomes awfully frivolous and awfully tiresome awfully fast. If you're in the mood for nonstop fighting, kicking, punching, and killing, with a dollop of juvenile humor thrown in, "Bulletproof Monk" may be just what you're looking for. As for the rest of us, it's the same old, same old, and not much more.
Agreed.
The idea here is that Tibetan monks have been preserving and guarding since time immemorial an ancient artifact, the "Scroll of the Ultimate," an object of unlimited power. Anyone who reads the scroll out loud in its entirety gains eternal life and the power to control the world. Talk about the pen being mightier than the sword. An individual monk guards the scroll for sixty years, during which time he becomes invulnerable and never ages; then he relinquishes his guardianship to another, chosen monk, who stays young while the former guy withers up.
Our story begins in 1943 as the guardianship is being handed to Chow Yun-Fat's character, who must give up his identity and become for the next sixty years a monk with no name. For the duration of the review, we'll simply call him the Monk. Immediately fast forward sixty years to the present, and it's time for the Monk to find a successor, all the while trying to dodge a group of ex-Nazis who are out to get the scroll. That's about it. Half the film is about the succession of guardianship, half about the fight with the baddies. It's mostly mindless motion.
What slapped me on the face like a cheap after-shave, though, was the blatant similarities to "Raiders of the Lost Ark." It isn't just that the Nazis storm the Temple of Sublime Truth looking for yet another artifact that Hitler believed would allow him to control the world (although in this film, it isn't Hitler, it's a loose cannon Nazi officer who wants the power for himself). It was the WAY that the Nazi behaved. The tone and the confrontation, even the background music was an unmistakable nod in the direction of Indiana Jones, and that, of course, reinforced the comic tone. Then we jump forward 60 years and leave Tibet for New York. Why? We don't know.
The new potential guardian comes in an unlikely form: A wily young thief named Kar (Seann William Scott), with a heart of gold. The Monk feels Kar is the right person for the job because the kid fulfills some venerable prophecies. Kar wants no part of it. But to the Monk the kid seems to be perfect, especially as he is a passingly good martial artist, something that comes in handy when you're protecting the most valuable object in the history of the world. Kar learned his martial arts skills at the Golden Palace, a local movie theater, where he imitated the actors on screen. And I'm a water buffalo because I watch the Nature Channel.
Funny. Now move along, before I get out my cattle prod.
Joining forces with the Monk and Kar in helping to defend the scroll is Jade (Jaime King), the beautiful daughter of a rich and powerful but now incarcerated mobster. She, too, is a martial artist, and how she becomes involved in this affair is a story unto itself. Suffice it to say, it has to do with Kar's attraction to her. Scott, incidentally, plays the same brash, flippant fellow he played in "American Pie," and King is, well, beautiful. Neither character displays a strong enough personality to carry the movie, nor does Chow Yun-Fat, for that matter, since he does little but look calm and reassured most of the time.
So, it's up to the villains to do their part to keep us interested in the goings on. The main evildoer is Strucker (Karel Roden), an ex-Nazi who has been chasing after the Monk for sixty years and just caught up with him. He wants to rule the world and cleanse it of inferior beings. Or inferior beans, I wasn't sure. He should start by eliminating comic-book villains. When Strucker finally gets his hands on the scroll's secret message and turns young again, he's stuck with the same bad haircut he had sixty years earlier. Doesn't seem fair. Equally evil is his granddaughter, Nina (Victoria Smurfit), the kind of dragon lady whose disposition could wilt flowers in a conservatory. They and their various henchmen liven things up, especially as Strucker has a penchant for weird, medieval torture devices in his subterranean basement, giving the set designer a field day.
See, this was the film's big misstep, as far as I'm concerned. It's one thing to offer up a subterranean, "Blade Runner" set in a post-apocalyptic world, but when commuters in 2003 are grabbing those subway hand-straps, as usual, it really seems jarring. I can see it working in a comic book, but it doesn't really blend into the rest of the narrative.
There are a couple of cute bits along the way, like Kar struggling to climb over a wall while the Monk walks around it, but mostly the humor is limited to the movie's corny, fortune-cookie style dialogue and its over-the-top, bullet-dodging action. Doors are never just broken open, they're knocked down! And our peace-loving Monk is not opposed to using an automatic weapon in each hand as well as kicking the living daylights out of his opponents.
And to be fair, there are a couple of nifty scenes, like the one where he does a backflip to avoid a speeding car, which then strikes the two guys chasing him. Their guns fly up in the air, and the Monk with No Name catches them, one in each hand, and starts blasting away like John Wayne. Again, tonally, it reminded me of the scene where Indiana Jones faces a scimitar-wielding assassin who goes through all these menacing moves, only to have Indy shrug, pull out his gun, and shoot the guy.
"Bulletproof Monk" may provide the expected antics of a comic book, but it seems a decided letdown for Chow Yun-Fat as his first film after "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."
Video:
On the DVD release, the colors are generally beautiful, thanks to the film's art director, but they do not always show up as well as we might hope. The focus is a tad soft, and the brilliance ranges from bright to dull, depending on the scene. The Blu-ray version is far more consistent, but it must be the master, because some of the conditions you describe exist here too. The color saturation isn't all that high and the black levels could have been stronger, but the sharpness is there throughout the film. None of the haloing or jittery lines that you saw in the SD version. In short, it's a big improvement. The 1080p picture (2.35:1 aspect ratio) was transferred to a 25-gig single-layer disc using MPEG-2 technology at 20MBPS.
Audio:
Once again, Blu-ray delivers dynamic sound, with the featured soundtrack a resonant and booming English DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio. Lesser options are English and French Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, with subtitles in English (CC) and Spanish. It sounds great, with plenty of rear-speaker action that gives the illusion of bullets whizzing over your couch.
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