Rating:
2 out of 5
Short version: Bangkok Dangerous, isn’t.
Screen Rant reviews Bangkok Dangerous
If Nicolas Cage doesn’t get a hit movie soon, he’s going to be doomed to doing only National Treasure sequels for the rest of his life. I knew I was in trouble when the showing I attended (11AM on a Saturday) consisted of me, and two other guys who walked in right before the movie started.
That’s it - 3 people.
In Bangkok Dangerous, Nicolas Cage plays an assassin who is the poster boy for the word “loner.” He travels the world and does his job with painstaking precision, but he’s just about had enough and is ready to do one last job and quit.
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How do we know this?
Via one of the most dreaded movie gimmicks: The Voiceover.
The movie opened up and immediately went into a Cage-voiced narration. I bristled at this immediately as I am NOT a fan of this style of exposition. Usually I find it to be a “cheat” - a lazy way to bring us up to speed or tell us about a character instead of just showing us.
In any case, I figured “OK, fine, so they’re setting the movie up,” so I let it go. The movie went on for a couple of minutes and then: more narration. I actually wrote in my notes “Oh man, the voiceover is continuing.” But if that were my only problem with the movie, it wouldn’t have been THAT bad.
The main issue I had with Bangkok Dangerous is that it was overly dramatic - melodramatic to be precise. It felt like the director was trying too hard, similar to an old Saturday Night Live skit where there are a couple of actors in a scene shouting “Acting!” “Very good!” “Thank You!” It was almost written like one of those old poorly written detective novels from the 1940s: “It was a dark a steamy night, the fog rolled in like a hooker schmoozing a ‘John’ on a neon-drenched street corner.”
It’s a shame, because there were things I liked about the film - Nicolas Cage’s highly detailed and methodical planning and execution (no pun) of his assassinations, the performance of the young Thai woman (Panward Hemmanee) who captured his heart, even that of Shahkrit Yamnarm, who plays at first the delivery boy and then the apprentice.
But much of the film was pretentious, ridiculous and predictable. There is one scene where Cage assassinates someone by drowning them in a pool in their fortified home complete with guards standing around the pool area. How does he do this? He lays in wait underwater, drags the guy under, holds him under long enough for the guy to drown and then swims away underwater to avoid detection.
So my question is: Is he an assassin or freaking Aquaman? How did he manage to hold his breath long enough to accomplish all this and outlast the other guy by far?
There was also a scene where the deaf girl performs on stage as a dancer in a musical number. I’m sorry, but to do that shouldn’t you actually be able to hear the music?
The movie almost started to get decent towards the end, but then they had to blow that as well with a ridiculous scene with Cage and a bad guy shooting at each other through a bunch of water jugs from about 10 feet away. Frankly I found that scene to be just plain stupid.
The interesting thing is that the movie was an American remake of a Thai film and it was written and directed by the same guys who did the original. Maybe the original just wasn’t that great either…
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28 Comments
@Daniel
Ok, fine, there are instances when it works, but overall I don’t like voiceovers used.
Vic
I saw the original Thai version of this movie but I haven’t seen Nick Cage’s version so I really couldn’t make a comparison. But what I can say is, the original was fairly decent. It doesn’t have the explosive, high speed pace or bloody gruesomeness of a Hollywood action movie but it I liked it mainly because the story delved more on the emotional turmoil of the main protagonists (eg. the assassin). By the way, in the original version, the assassin was the one who was deaf.
I wouldn’t want to say anything more because some of you here might want to see the original and I don’t want to end up writing a spoiler for you.
I saw the orginal but now im kinda glad i read this so i dont waste my money on seeing this one
Truly awful. A showcase for the weaker side of Asian cinema - too many ‘coincidences’ acting as plot devices, over-stylised shoot outs, arbitrary and shallow romances. Cage certainly put the bullet in what was already a half-dead duck. His hair was, perhaps, more plausible than his character.
I got this on dvd, and i liked it for what it was, basically “american actor in Thailand action film” but what blew me was the ending..If you are a hitman and the thai cops show up, does that mean you kill your target by shooting yourself in the head as well thereby committing suicide??I just didn’t get that ending at all..it just didn’t hold up with the story as a whole and Nic Cage should’ve walked when he was told that was the ending of this film..He actually looked like he cared for the part he played especially when his character was training his protege’..
Now on the special features, there is a different ending where he survives because his sidekick gets him out of there then taken to a local village and fixed up, which later its decided that he has to leave, then gives his goodbyes to his friend..
That was better ending to me, made more sense…I was wondering which was the one in the theater version???
Another movie review that shows why movie critics are useless - anyone can criticize what they don’t understand. Sounds like Vic going in with a preconceived notion and already having written a bad review, assuming he even bothered to screen it. If he can’t even get the actors correct, then it’s tough to make the leap that you even watched the flick to begin with. This sounds more like a “review” based on what some other “critic” told you and not based on something you’ve screened.
You can’t figure out how someone could slip into a pool, a deaf person can dance (aside from vibrations, she’s also not blind - there are visual cues that dancers use as well), and can’t even get the cast members correct. So why are we supposed to believe your “review” is accurate if you can’t figure out simple details? This isn’t rocket science, it’s a simple “Retiring Hitman with 1 more Job” formula movie.
There was enough vegetation around the pool to hide in quietly and view the target before actually slipping into the pool, and it doesn’t take that much imagination to figure out other ways Cage could’ve gotten into the pool undetected. You assume that the guard was alive prior to him getting into the pool, or that he was in the pool before the target gets in. All we see is cage swimming toward him - he could’ve easily done a silent kill on the guard and slipped quietly into the pool. Or even if he was there, it was dark enough to hide in a corner or shadow of the pool on the surface.
I agree with Victor’s post that the original ending sucked. I don’t know what it is about the current propensity of films to do European or Asian style crap endings where everyone dies, but here in the States it sucks. We don’t expect that, nor do we prefer or like it, yet it seems more and more directors are going that way. It didn’t surprise me in this film being directed by the Pan’s, but it still sucked. The alternate was much better, and I’m sure they included it for American audiences.
What Vic and the rest of you naysayers fail to do here is judge the film based on Hong Kong cinema standards - Cage has always wanted to do more HK style flicks, having been a fan for most of his life. If you judge the movie based on HK standards, it’s a very good and well produced film. Cage is the only recognizable actor in the cast - it’s similar to Chow Yun Fat doing a movie here in America and being screened in Asia, where he’s the well-known actor but everyone else is an unknown.
Charlie Yeung’s performance as Fon (Cage’s pharmacist girlfriend that betrays him) is fantastic considering she’s not deaf - she fooled me and I’ve been around enough deaf people who use sign language. All of the fight sequences are well done, and none of the actors used in the movie are amateurs of any type - most of the key actors are well-known Asian stars.
Actually screen a movie before writing a “review”. If you actually DID screen this, then I suggest that maybe you should find another line of work or go back to school, because your analysis of the film’s elements isn’t even close to the mark. Critics are supposed to give an unbiased opinion, though these days anything “unbiased” from any media source is a lie or stretch at best. If you can’t be impartial, then do regular writing for any regular newspaper where bias is expected and the norm. People on the ‘net expect more.
Raven
What. Ever.
I had NO preconceived notions - I didn’t know anything about this film before watching it. And I didn’t make up that only two other people were in the theater when I was there. And as to:
“What Vic and the rest of you naysayers fail to do here is judge the film based on Hong Kong cinema standards”
Um, hello? This was an AMERICAN film made for AMERICAN audiences - why the hell should anyone judge it by Hong Kong Cinema standards?
And I’m not alone… Here:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bangkok_dangerous/
8 out of 86 reviewers thought it was any good at all.
And even at IMDB.com, where “regular” people vote for movies, it only garnered a 5.4/10. Not much higher than what I gave it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814022/
If you enjoyed it, good for you. But don’t go accusing me of writing reviews without having seen the film.
Vic
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