Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Bulletproof Monk Blu-ray Movie Review

"Somehow I sense he has potential..."

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown January 21, 2025

Welcome back to the land of nostalgia and guilty-pleasure action-adventuring! I'm your host, Ken Brown, and today we've got one hell of an average, so-so actioner that teens in the early 2000s absolutely fell in love with. Not enough to save it at the box office, mind you, and certainly not enough to launch the franchise I'm sure its filmmakers envisioned, but enough to earn some laughs, have fun with post-Matrix wire-fu FX, and to bump up the star of Sean William-Scott, who spent the better part of ten years trying to leap from American Pie to the likes of The Rundown. (He actually turned out to be a great asset to action-oriented buddy comedies. Hollywood just dropped the ball somewhere along the way.) Bulletproof Monk -- what a title! -- brings everything to the table in an attempt to stand out. Unfortunately, it brings so much to the table that it ends up feeling oh so generic; like a rehash of 101 similar films you've already seen. The chemistry of its stars still burns bright but the floaty martial arts and saccharine pairing of a thief with a heart of gold and a nigh-invincible warrior with unflinching morals doesn't bubble to the surface. In the end, it's little more than a nostalgia-driven, guilty pleasure. If you're down for that, read on...

"The Air! You can't see it but it's there. It fills your lungs! Air is as real as you and me. It's as real and the same as blood or flesh or bone or earth or water. Once you understand and realize this, you treat the air the same way as you treat other things. You step on it as you would a stone, you swim through it as you would the sea. And all you have to do is truly believe."

Bulletproof Monk follows the adventure of a nameless Monk (Chow Yun-Fat), whose story begins in 1943 in Tibet. The Monk is entrusted with the priceless treasure of a mystical scroll which, of course, bestows unearthly powers to anyone who possesses it. Need I tell you the Nazis are in pursuit, and in probably the best overall action sequence of the film, we get off to a literal bang with the Monk first in training in an exciting sequence and then move on to him and his cohorts fighting off the invading German hoard. The Scroll, aside from offering untold power, also bestows perpetual youth on its holder, and so when the Monk is chosen to keep it safe from those with nefarious motives, he stays his same youthful self some 60 years later, when he shows up in New York City and quickly befriends a wisecracking street hustler named Kar (Seann William Scott). Kar is tangentially involved with an auburn-haired bombshell known as Bad Girl (Jaime King) who it turns out is the daughter of an imprisoned Russian mobster. And just for good measure the evil Nazi (Karel Roden) who tried and failed to obtain the Scroll in the 40’s reappears to wreak havoc once again more than half a century later.

Click here to read the rest of Jeffrey Kauffman's review of the film, which he calls "an amiable enough romp through Chop-Socky land that nonetheless is hobbled by being so obviously culled from so many predecessors it's hard to keep track of at times." Adding, "what ultimately serves as a saving grace or two here is a self-deprecating humor which infuses a lot of the film, and the undeniable charm and charisma of the lead trio."

Bulletproof Monk Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

One of my first reviews as a fledgling Blu-ray reviewer was Meet Joe Black. I was thrilled with the picture quality. So sharp, so precise. Or so I thought. That was one of my first encounters with the internet, or at least the videophile wing of the internet. They ripped me up and down for missing the glaring edge halos and artificial sharpening slathered all over the image. Right then and there I learned an important lesson. Well, maybe two. Look closer and look at how awful artificial sharpening can be. Once you see it you can't unsee it, and that's precisely what spoils Bulletproof Monk. You may not notice it at first, but it's there, snaking along every razor-sharp edge; a sliver of white or black, a halo around every crisp bit of definition. It's not the worst I've seen, but in 2025, it's particularly disappointing, not to mention a clear indicator that one is dealing with an old transfer. There are other problems too. Colors can get a bit muddy, primaries don't always pop with the vibrancy they're clearly meant to, crush is out in force, and grain filtering rears its head. That said, Bulletproof Monk isn't likely to see a revival or remaster anytime soon. Clarity is reasonably revealing, colors suitably well-saturated, and contrast is decent. There also isn't any significant blocking or banding, although the encode isn't exactly roomy either. All told, it's an average presentation that in the days of DVD would have impressed. Today it's dated and in need of an upgrade.

Bulletproof Monk Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

While it's likely the same lossless mix that was featured on the 2006 MGM Blu-ray, the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track included with Bulletproof Monk is better than its video presentation. There isn't as much action to the film as you might suspect, but when it kicks in, so too does the LFE channel, lending some nice weight to the experience. The rear speakers get more active too, though they're suspiciously quiet during some conversational scenes, even when there should be more ambient presence. Still, directionality is quite good, as are channel pans, which are nice and smooth. Dialogue is clear and intelligible too, without anything in the way of prioritization mishaps. Music is a bit too blatty and artificially percussey (for lack of better terms) but that likely falls at the feet of the score rather than the lossless track.

Bulletproof Monk Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No extras are included.

Bulletproof Monk Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Bulletproof Monk... the comicbook-esque franchise that never came to be. It has its moments -- it remains a decent splash of fun -- but it never rises past its bits and pieces, feeling too much like too many other films to leave its own mark. Ah well. It's Blu-ray is sadly dated as well, with a problematic, outmoded video presentation, a decent but somewhat ineffectual lossless audio track, and zero extras.