Screen Rant » bangkok dangerous

Screen Rant On /Filmcast Live Tonight!

Vic Holtreman — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 22:07:24 +0000

[UPDATE: If you missed the live show, you can download it here or grab it over at /Film.com.]

I thought that today I’d give you more advanced notice (warning?). Tonight I’ll be joining the gang from /Film again for their /FilmCast Live.

You can join in on the show live or download it in a day or two when it’s online (but the live version is MUCH more fun, including flubs and outtakes that won’t be in the final version).

It will start at 7PM PST/10PM EST tonight (Monday, Spetember 8th).

We’ll be discussing the abysmal Nicolas Cage film Bangkok Dangerous, Ghostbusters 3 plus the Batman 3 and crazy Captain America casting rumors.

So if you’re a Screen Rant regular visitor and want to join in on the fun, head on over and give a listen: /FilmCast Live.

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Bangkok Dangerous Review

Vic Holtreman — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 03:37:23 +0000

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.

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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Nicolas Cage Talks Ghost Rider 2 and Kick-Ass

Niall Browne — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:37:15 +0000

Nicolas Cage – love him or loathe him, you have to admire the man’s work ethic. He makes movies like they are going out of fashion, and while they may not always find an audience, they do show an actor who likes to try different material. No matter how crazy it may appear on paper (or on screen for that matter).

Cage has been doing the press rounds for Bangkok Dangerous and he has been spilling the beans on some of his forthcoming comic book movies: Ghost Rider 2 and Kick-Ass.

Cage’s only comic book movie to date, Ghost Rider, was a surprise success last year and a European based sequel is in the pipeline. When asked about a possible sequel Cage said:

“Yes, actually, had a nice meeting with the studio about 3-months ago, and we talked about going international with that character. Taking him into Europe, having him go on a motorcycle tour through Europe, and he’s connected with the church, if you can believe that. So it sort of has elements to it that are very much in the zeitgeist, with ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and things like that.”

Sounds like a nice holiday for old Nic.

Meanwhile the crazy haired actor talked about his role in Matthew Vaughn’s forthcoming Kick-Ass, an adaptation of Mark Millar’s comic of the same name. Cage said:

“As I continue working in film I want to try to keep it as organic and honest as possible, and I am that kid. I’m the kid that would dress up like a superhero, sneak out of the house at 10 o’clock at night, jump around pretending I was fighting crime. It was a good match because it’s definitely sincere. I play a guy named Damon, the father of Mindy who is ‘Hit Girl’ and I’m ‘Big Daddy,’ and I’m training my daughter to be a superhero.”

That’s why you have to love Cage, no matter how silly he sounds when he talks about movies, he comes across as very enthuastic.

If you are a Cage fan, Bangkok Dangerous opens on Friday.

Source: Comingsoon

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Weekend Movie News Wrap Up: August 24, 2008

Niall Browne — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:27:01 +0000

Yes folks it’s that time of the week! Once again we troll through the overlooked movie news to give you a fully comprehensive overview of what’s been happening in Hollywood.

This week:

Nicolas Cage decides to Kick Ass, every-one’s favorite Journeyman Kevin McKidd may be a Highlander, Ben Affleck Extract’s something for Mike Judge, Samuel L. Jackson eyes Red Tails for George Lucas and The Sweeney gets shafted by the British Film Industry.

1. Nicolas Cage, Aaron Johnson and Lyndsy Fonseca have signed on to Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of the Mark Millar comic book Kick Ass. According to The Hollywood Reporter the plot:

“…centers on a high school dweeb named Dave Lizewski who decides to become a superhero even though he has no athletic ability or coordination. Things change when he eventually runs into real bad guys with real weapons.Johnson plays title character, while Fonseca plays the object of the teen’s infatuation who believes Dave is gay. Cage is a former cop who wants to bring down a druglord and has trained his daughter (Chloe Moretz) to be a lethal weapon.“

It sounds like an interesting enough premise, but it also appears that there might be a bit too much going on to make for a focused film. At least Cage appears to be scratching his comic book itch these days, which should keep him away from Superman!

The crazy haired Elvis loving actor will next be seen in Bangkok Dangerous on September 5.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

2. It looks like Journeyman star Kevin McKidd may be the new Highlander. According to Joblo the actor was talking on Dublin radio and he stated that he’d been approached to star in the reboot of the series which originally starred Sean Connery and Christopher Lambert.

Is there truth in this? Who knows – but he is from Scotland and he has been known to wield a sword (see Rome) so there is a chance that there may be something to this.

Source: Joblo.com

3. Ben Affleck is in negotiations to star in Mike Judge’s new film Extract. According to Variety Affleck would play a lawyer who is the best friend of Jason Bateman’s lead in the new film.

“The Arrested Development actor stars as ‘a flower extract factory owner dealing with workplace problems and a streak of bad luck, including his wife’s affair with a gigolo.’”

It sounds quirky, but I don’t think that it’s going to break Affleck’s losing streak at the box office.

Source: Variety

4. It would appear that Samuel L. Jackson has been approached by George Lucas to direct the long gestating Red Tails.

Jackson told IGN :

“I just read it like two weeks ago. It’s a pretty good script. At one point (Lucas) was asking me if I’d ever want to direct anything. I said, ‘I don’t know, man. I’m trying to find things.’ He said, ‘Well, let me send you this thing. Maybe you might want to direct it.’ Well, I guess if I was gonna direct something George would be a great guy to kind of mentor me through that, especially a big ass special effects flying picture. The script’s good. I like it.”

However, Jackson isn’t too certain that he wants to direct:

“I don’t know. I don’t have a year and a half of my life where I wanna stop acting.”

Not earth shattering news, but it is interesting. Will Red Tails ever get made? Probably, but hasn’t the story already been told in the 1995 TV movie Tuskegee Airmen starring new CSI star Laurence Fishburne?

Source: IGN

5. The film version of the iconic British cop show The Sweeney has been put on hold. The film was due to star Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’s Ray Winstone as Jack Regan, but producers were worried that without a major star the film wouldn’t recoup its $16 million budget.

It’s a shame – the show is hugely influential in the UK and the British Film industry could be doing with a good home grown franchise. Harry Potter and James Bond films are not included as they are made with American money. The 1970’s detective show helped inspire the recent quirky sci-fi cop series Life on Mars. Even with something as small as a budget of $16 million British producers are still afraid to roll the dice on a film.

The British Film industry really needs a good kick in the ass to get motivated and start producing more commercial material for the rest of the world. Romantic comedy aside the UK isn’t really known for producing commercial cinema, and when they do make a good movie it hardly gets a release (if at all).

Every few years we do get a good British film that has commercial and critical success. In the last fifteen or so years we have had films like Trainspotting, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Dog Soldiers and The Full Monty which have been very successful around the world. However, what followed the release of these movies was a series of cheap imitations that ran the respective genres into the ground.

The UK really must get it sorted if it wants to have a selt sustaining film industry that can survive on it’s own.

Source: Variety

That’s it for another week.

See you at the movies!

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Bangkok Dangerous Poster

Niall Browne — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:45:45 +0000

I could make a billion crude jokes about the title of this film, however I’m sure that you’d get a bigger kick trying to think of them yourself, so I won’t spoil your fun, but I will point out that the tag-line for this film is:

“There’s only one way out”

Anyway, Bangkok Dangerous is a new thriller starring the world’s greatest Elvis memorabilia collector: Nicolas Cage.

Cage’s name on a film can divide movie fans in an instant, I really like the dude. I watched The Rock recently and it still rocks (see what I did there) after 12 years. The Rock was Cage’s first action film, and at the time few believed that he could play an action hero . Now most people know Cage as an action blockbuster star. Funny what a few movies can do.

Well, it’s now time for Cage to pull off that action hero thing one more time in Bangkok Dangerous, an action thriller that looks a little bit Bourne, a little bit Bond and all Nic Cage, right down to crazy hair and a Hawaiian shirt.

Bangkok Dangerous is a remake of a 1999 film directed by Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang.
I’ve never heard of the original film which IMDB says is:

“The story is of a deaf-mute hit-man and his partner who are based in Bangkok.”

From the trailer (see it here) of the Cage film (again directed by the bothers Pang) it doesn’t look like the lead character is deaf, mute or that he has a partner. It does look cool though, and I’m all for an adult oriented action movie.

What is interesting is the movie’s poster, the major selling point is Nic Cage’s face. Let’s be honest, he’s quite a strange looking fellow, so this poster is kinda creepy.

It’s just a shame that the marketing bods decided not to include that hair.

Bangkok Dangerous opens on August 22, 2008.

Sources: ignfilmforce and joblo

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