skjam | Entries tagged with thailand

Bangkok Dangerous (2008) dir. Oxide Chun Pang

Joe (Nicolas Cage) is very good at his job. Very professional. He stays anonymous, doesn't ask questions, doesn't get personally involved with people, and erases all traces. This is very important to be a successful international hitman. How did he get into the business? How do his clients hire him? How do his clients even know he exists? Not important. We see him complete an assignment in Prague, then murder his go-between, the one person who's seen his face in this country, with a drug overdose.

Still, the profession's beginning to get to him, and it's time to get out. He's got a contract for four hits in Bangkok, Thailand, and this one last job will net him enough money to retire on. Wait. Dangerous occupation? One last job? Action movie? I think I know where this is going.

After some scouting, Joe picks out local pickpocket and street grifter Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm) as his courier to make contact with the client. Kong...means well, but is a bit of a weak link. He gets the hots for Aom (Panward Hemmanee), the exotic dancer who acts as the client's go-between. She's not entirely resistant to his charms. But he also owes money to bad people who mug him. He manages to get away, but the case is damaged and Kong realizes Joe is an assassin, and the very bad man whose picture is inside is the target.

Kong, who despite his entire life to this point is still something of an idealist, asks Joe to train him. Joe knows he should just kill Kong now, but takes pity on the young man and starts treating him as a protege. Joe also starts a relationship with Fon (Charlie Yeung), a deaf-mute pharmacist he meets. It turns out to be harder to keep his professional and personal lives separate than he had hoped.

Meanwhile, mob boss Surat (Nirattisai Kaljareuk), the client, knows that the final hit will be too hot for Joe not to be a liability afterwards, and plans a double cross with the aid of his lieutenant Aran (Dom Hetrakul). Who, if anyone, will be left standing?

This movie is a remake of the Pang Brothers' 1999 Thai film of the same name for the American market. Sadly, I have not seen the original to compare. From descriptions, it appears quite a bit was rearranged, starting with making the lead a hearing and speaking American rather than a deaf-mute Thai man.

Good: Excellent pacing, use of scenery and action sequences. I can see why Oxide is considered an outstanding director.

Nic Cage is mostly well-used in an underacting manner--a man who's largely made himself dead inside in order to be able to do his horrible job at peak performance. But he's fraying at the edges, and the cracks in his emotional armor keep getting wider. We also learn that political assassination isn't normally in his wheelhouse. As discussed in Suddenly, it's easy to kill major politicians, but almost impossible to get away afterwards.

Yamnarm is also quite good as Kong. He's not a good person, but would like to be. He jumps to the conclusion that Joe only kills bad people, (darkly humorous since we know that Joe fully intends to kill him) and is hopeful that maybe the politician he likes will be the one person in government who isn't completely corrupt.

Yeung is charming as Fon, who needs to use body language, facial expressions and sign language (which is not translated well) to communicate her feelings. The romance gives the director a chance to show off some of the nice touristy parts of Bangkok in addition to the sleazy areas usually seen in Thai action movies.

Less good: Cage and Yeung have no chemistry as a couple, and I found Fon being willing to give Joe the time of day the least believable part of the movie. Aom is basically eye candy, rather than a character in her own right.

Silly thought: Given the complete blankness of his background, one can imagine this Joe being an alternate universe version of the one from Joe; there are certain echoes in their characters.

Content note: Lots of violence, often lethal, sometimes gory (including a severed limb.) Suicide. Extramarital sex (on screen, no genitals), nudity, mention of human trafficking. Physical abuse, implied torture. Drug abuse. Rough language (you can learn some Thai obscenities.) This is a hard "R" so not for younger or sensitive viewers.

Overall: This was apparently a box office bomb, I think rather unjustly. (Nic Cage had a career slump afterwards that may have made this disappear down the memory hole.) The action bits are good, the romance bits don't quite work. Recommended primarily to Nicolas Cage fans, and to action fans (but the hardcore action fans who are okay with subtitles might want to see the original instead.)

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: "Snow Over Leningrad"--Mikael Tariverdiev

Bangkok Haunted (2001) dir. Oxide Chun Pang

We open on a moving truck in the Thai countryside, heading for Bangkok. The man sitting in the back taking care of the packages gets scratched by...something. The moment he realizes he's in a horror story, he jumps out the back of the truck, which would ordinarily be a stupid thing to do, but in this case makes him the smartest person in the movie. (Looks like he survives, anyway.) The driver isn't shown to be concerned about the disappearance of his partner when he delivers the boxes to Jieb (Pimsiree Pimsee), who I think is a grad student. Among the boxes is one that doesn't belong to her, which contains an antique drum of a style favored before World War Two.

Jieb calls in her professor, and we flashback to the tragic tale of Paga (also Pimsiree Pimsee). Paga was a young orphan adopted by a music/dance teacher and trained to become a traditional style dancer. She developed a bond with the teacher's deformed son Gnod, who was good at neither music nor dance, but a skilled woodcarver. When Paga has matured into a beautiful young woman, she is courted by the handsome Fond, and finds him agreeable. Unfortunately, while Paga loved Gnod like a brother, he loved her in a different way, and became violently jealous. On the night of Paga's engagement to Fond, she and Gnod disappeared and were never seen again.

In the present, the antique drum seems to be the center of bizarre events, and eventually Jieb learns the full story behind the events, with dangerous repercussions.

It's at this point we learn the movie has a framing sequence of three women in a Bangkok coffee bar trading horror stories. Jieb has left the end of her tale a bit ambiguous, and the other two woman complain about that.

The second story features Pan (Dawan Singha-Wee), a sexually frustrated young woman. She's not thrilled when her next-door neighbor brings home a man and she can hear them having wild sex through the wall. Pan is surprised though, when she wakes up the next morning and the neighbors are still at it. The neighbor attributes her success, and multiple husbands she's outlived, to "Ply Essence", an aphrodisiac perfume. She has a drop left for Pan to try.

Pan manages to snag a random hookup at the club that night, and the sex is awesome, but the man falls ill the next morning. Maybe there are side effects?

While waiting for her own bottle (there are supply issues--and the audience gets to see the secret ingredient, it's just as gross as you were expecting), Pan gets a hankering for Tim, a handsome fellow who takes the same ferry to work that she does. Too bad he seems to have a girlfriend!

Once she has her supply of Ply Essence, Pan decides to overuse it in a non-recommended way. Good news is, she's now with Tim forever. Bad news is, she's now with Tim forever.

The final story has handsome police detective Nop (Pete Thongchua) investigating the death of Kanya (Kalyanut Sriboonrueng), a woman found hanged from a rafter. It's been ruled a suicide, but Nop notices the evidence doesn't support that. The chief is absolutely convinced it's a suicide and tells Nop to drop the case. In the tradition of cowboy cops everywhere, Nop continues his investigation on the down low. Was it Vinal, Kanya's abusive husband, or her secret lover In? The careful viewer will probably spot the significance of some clues before Nop does, but the real solution to the case is still a shocker.

The supernatural elements in this last story are very minor, and it could have worked as a straight police thriller (very Alfred Hitchcock Presents), but put the story in a very different context by being present.

And there's a last twist in the framing sequence.

Good: Watching foreign horror movies is always an adventure. The filmmakers bring their own culture to the table, with their own ideas of what's scary and what's "normal." They might have taken on ideas and craft from Hollywood, (there are Nightmare Before Christmas and Fiddler on the Roof t-shirts visible) but with their own accents and innovations. This movie does that very well, especially with the use of traditional Thai music in the first story. The cinematography is good, and I thought the acting worked well.

Less Good: The editing uses a lot of freeze-frame transitions that made me think for the first couple that my DVD player was stalling, and kept irritating me thereafter. Not revealing the framing sequence until after the first story confused me. Several actors appear in multiple segments, causing questions about whether they were playing the same characters in each or just keeping cast cost down.

Political: The third story looks like it's going into "copaganda" (police officers do unethical/illegal things and are treated by the story as though they're the heroes for doing so) territory, but by the end it's an ACAB story.

Content note: Oh Lordy. Gore, death, closeups of wounds and internal organs, body horror, forced abortion, suicide. Female toplessness, on screen extramarital sex (no genitals), dubious consent sex. Vomiting, other body fluids. Ableism. You'd better have a strong stomach.

Overall: A very good horror film with a couple of irritating flaws. Recommended to horror fans who are okay with the gore and can handle subtitles.

Current Music: "Haunted Halloween Night"

Chocolate (2008) dir. Prachya Pinkaew

Zin (Ammara Siripong) was a ruthless loan shark and former lover of Thai mob boss Number Eight (Pongpat Wachirabunjong) until she fell in love with Yakuza member Masashi (Hiroshi Abe). Number Eight violently objected to the relationship, which he felt was an invasion of his territory, and Masashi was forced to return to Japan. Shortly thereafter, Zin gave birth to a girl she named Zen (Yanin Vismitananda). Zen turned out to have special needs (somewhere on the autism spectrum), so Zin retired from active criminality.

Years passed, and Zin effectively adopted neighbor boy Moom (Taphon Phopwandee, "Mike" in the English dub), who becomes Zen's guardian/caretaker/friend. Moom realizes that while Zen may have trouble verbalizing, compulsive behaviors, and difficulty dealing with breaks in her routines, she also has uncanny hearing and reflexes, allowing her to catch things thrown to or at her, even when she can't see them. He convinces Zen to use these skills in street performances to earn petty cash. Zen also turns out to have the ability to learn martial arts moves by watching other people do them and then practicing by herself--there's a Muay Thai school next door, and she likes Tony Jaa movies.

Zin's smoking habit catches up with her, and she develops cancer that requires expensive chemotherapy. Moom wants to help out, but street entertainers don't make that kind of money. But then he stumbles across Zin's old accounts book and realizes that a lot of people owe her cash. Moom has only ever known Zin as a kindly single mom, so doesn't initially question why these people owe her money. He and Zen go out to collect these debts.

Unfortunately, the biggest debtors listed are the kind of businessmen who need loans from the mob and tend to employ a lot of goons. The first is an ice factory owner who naturally refuses to pay a couple of teenagers on a more than a decade old note. Zen has it fixed in her mind that her mother needs the money to have medical treatment and insists. The ice man sets his goons on the kids and Zen whips out her sweet martial arts moves. She gets the money.

A couple more collection trips and fight scenes later, Zin finally finds out what her children are up to. She realizes that this will enrage Number Eight, and sends a letter to Masashi to beg for help. Number Eight's gang intercepts the letter, which enrages the mob boss even more (he's the type to hold a grudge forever.) Now the family must fight not just for money, but for their lives.

After Ong-Bak (see my previous review) and The Protector, director Prachya Pinkaew decided to switch things up with a female lead for his next big action movie.

I have to admit, going in cold I wasn't even sure that I was watching the right movie. It opens with an extended sequence of the steamy romance between Masashi (who wasn't even mentioned in the DVD box blurb) and Zin, then scenes from Zen's childhood to set up her backstory before finally getting to the promised martial arts action. The title turns out to be because Zen's favorite sweet is candy-coated chocolate pieces, played for drama at one point.

Good: Sweet, sweet martial arts action sequences. My favorite is the abattoir scene, which uses OSHA violations for comedy. (Warning: not for the squeamish!) The big final fight goes on a teensy too long as Number Eight's goons just keep spawning and spawning. Seriously, crime in Bangkok probably dropped by ten percent while all these thugs were in the hospital/morgue. Zen's thing is copycatting, so we get scenes reminiscent of Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and Jet Li as well as Tony Jaa.

Maybe not so good: This movie plays the "disability superpower" trope absolutely straight. Having autism may cause Zen many problems in everyday life, but gives her abilities that make her a martial arts savant. Once she starts using her abilities to fight, the only opponent that gives her any real difficulty in a hand to hand fight is a young man who appears to have a form of Tourette's Syndrome that makes his dance battle moves difficult to predict (Kittitat Kowahagul as "Epileptic Boxer", mercifully named "Thomas" in the dub.)

Media representation of autism spectrum disorders is an especially contentious subject, and I am not educated enough on the matter to give an opinion on how well this movie does--I ask that commentators be respectful of each other in the replies.

Speaking of representation, Number Eight's elite goons are listed in the credits as "Lady Boys" and Number Eight's own gender presentation becomes a bit more mixed as he ages. It's never brought up in dialogue, and no one ever treats them differently from the other criminals, so yay for that, but it also feeds into the "effeminate villain" stereotype that media has, so feels kind of icky.

Overall: Great as an action movie, but the representation issues may sink it for some viewers. Approach with caution.

Current Mood: lethargic

Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior (2003) dir. Prachya Pinkaew

Don (Wannakit Sirioput) had one job. Go to a remote village in Thailand, buy an ancient amulet at way below market price, and return it to mob boss Komtuan (Suchao Pongwilai) for sale on the black market. He failed because the village chief is saving the amulet for his son Humlae (Petchtai Wongkamlao) to wear when he finally returns to the village to take up his priestly role. Not wanting to return empty-handed, Don steals the head of Ong-Bak, the village's guardian statue. The village is stricken with drought, and there are only six days left before the festival of Ong-Bak must be held to save it. The villagers turn to their tree-climbing champion Ting (Tony Jaa) to go to Bangkok and retrieve the head.

Ting is also skilled in the art of Muay Boran (an older form of Muay Thai) but has been warned never to use it except in self-defense as his master once killed an opponent in the ring and has been consumed with guilt ever since. The villagers pool their meager resources to aid Ting in his quest.

Once in Bangkok, Ting looks up Humlae to assist him. But Humlae has become the grifter George, perpetually losing at gambling and in debt to thugs. George's only ally is his girlfriend Muay Lek (Pumwaree Yodkamol) who is allegedly a college student but mostly helps George with his scams. George has no interest in anything having to do with his hick home town or tracking down stolen stones. That is, until Ting stumbles into an underworld fight club and turns out to be awesome at kicking butt. Now, if he can just get Ting to make him some money....

This was the first Tony Jaa film to make it big in the West, and sparked a renewed interest in Thai films in general. Part of the attraction was that Jaa did all his own stunts without the aid of wires or computer graphics, which had come to dominate larger budget martial arts films at the time. Mix realistic-looking kickboxing and some parkour-style jumping, and you've got some very nice action scenes. I especially liked the Tuk Tuks (minicabs) chase sequence.

Komtuan puts in a strong performance as a man who doesn't let the fact that he's lost his larynx to throat cancer and is confined to a wheelchair stop him from villainous hubris.

One of the themes of the movie is "country good, city bad." Ting is pure of heart and the villagers wholesome. The city dwellers are pretty much all jerks, most of the visible ones being mobsters or mobster-adjacent. Humlae/George has lost sight of what's truly important in life, Muay is only slightly nicer, and even Ting darkens and becomes more violent as he spends time in Bangkok. A more direct contrast is when Ting chews natural herbs to refresh his energy before the final fight (good) while his opponent injects artificial chemicals (bad.)

If the movie has a flaw, it's that the plot is a bit thin. This is the kind of story where the movie would have been a good hour shorter if George hadn't kept trying to trick Ting into making money for him, or the bad guys simply turned over the stone head that was worthless to them.

Content notes: Violence, not usually too graphic. Don and a woman of negotiable virtue start a sex scene, but when Ngek mentions she wants to get clean, he murders her with a cocaine overdose. Also, one of the villainous fight club opponents molests a waitress and insinuates that Thai women are prostitutes. Komtuan smokes through a hole in his throat.

Ong-Bak gave martial arts film makers a kick in the pants and upped their game, so other movies since then have surpassed it. But it's always good to go back to films that set off a trend and enjoy them on their own merits.