'Bulletproof Monk' needs more meditation

Despite the mediocre title, "Bulletproof Monk" is a reasonably entertaining film, a sort of modern take on B-movie, chopsocky films. Admittedly, this film's only hope for an award is from MTV, but for mindless entertainment, you could do worse.\nThe movie centers on Kar (Seann William Scott), a pickpocket by day and film projectionist by night. Kar accidentally gets mixed up with The Monk (Chow Yun-Fat), an ageless martial artist charged with protecting the text of an ancient scroll imbued with the power to completely alter the world. Once every 60 years, The Monk can pass on his abilities to a candidate who fulfills three prophecies. That candidate is Kar.\nUnfortunately, Kar is played by Scott, better known as Stifler from the "American Pie" movies, so believing he has any martial arts skill whatsoever is a serious stretch. For the duration of the film I was waiting for Kar to tell The Monk to get laid. Putting Scott in the role was a casting mistake, plain and simple, but the chemistry Scott has with Chow-Yun Fat makes the mistake bearable. Mind you, that chemistry is essentially the saving grace of the film, the paper-thin plot providing the barest of motivations. Character development is essentially non-existent, and the Nazi villains come straight out of the "Make Your Own Villain" movie kit, but the kung-fu action every 10 minutes helps take your mind off such trivialities.\nI should note that the martial arts action is a little tepid, particularly for audiences that are expecting "Matrix" or "Crouching Tiger" level quality. The wire work that allows the actors to perform their acrobatics is poorly done, and the scenes that were shot in front of a bluescreen are painfully obvious, but it's done with such aplomb that while blatant, it isn't terribly irritating. What would have been nice is fewer cuts during the fights, since the machine-gun-paced edits made it overly dfficult to tell what was going on. Had the filmmakers taken a page from John Woo's book and tried to shoot the martial arts in a relatively continuous take, the quality of the fight scenes would have improved immensely.\n"Bulletproof Monk" is mindless, fluff entertainment, a decent way to kill an hour and a half with some friends without being too challenged.