Bangkok Dangerous

[Drunk Monk]

Loved it. After spending a few weeks in Thailand, I've been fascinated by Thai cinema just like being in India left me with a fasciation with Bollywood. BD is this first film that really captures Bangkok for me. I spent over a week there, living on Khao San road and getting my ass beaten in Muay Thai as S worked on her Thai massage certificate at Wat Po. Crazy place. BD is the Bangkok I remember. This film has a gritty, frenetic feel. It revels in it's own low budget style and delivers something visionary. Clever cinematography that makes great use of a limited palette of filters, giving it an almost instagram-exposure feel. So many pools of slowly ebbing blood. It's one of the best Asian gangster films I've seen since John Woo was in his heyday.

Mind you, this is the original Pan bros film, not the remake with Nic Cage. I want to see that now because it must be so awful. I like Cage, but the very idea of him trying to redo this, even with the same directors, sounds just bad.

No sword fights but epic gun play. Total DOOM flick.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Maybe I needed to have gone to Bangkok to get the full effect from this film? But I get it. I enjoy books set in locals I have visited.

But this film was a murky mess. I spent a lot of time wishing the cinematographer had the budget to rent a few lights. Yes, there were a lot of montages of neon lit Bangkok but it was like someone said we really should do some montages.

As far as story goes, it didn't work for me. Especially the love story between deaf kid and pharmacy girl. I kept thinking why she didn't kick creepy deaf guy to the curb, especially when he approached her when she was shutting down the shop. In fact what they should have done, even though the story was bad, was start with deaf guy approaching pharmacy girl. Everything before that seemed to be setup. Movies should start when the action starts.

If there was some cool gun play at the end, I didn't see it. I had enough about the time deaf guy shot the muggers, maybe a bit later and shut the thing off.