Tale about ordinary villagers who fought against Burmese invaders in 18th century Siam. When King Mangra ascended the Burmese throne, he sent a huge army to attack the former Thai capital city of Ayutthaya by two different routes. But the small village of Bang Rajan chose to sacrifice their own lives before becoming slaves to the Burmese empire, and Siam remained in disarray until King Taksin the Great reunited the Siamese people into the single sovereignty that exists today.
Jitnukul can direct action, and every slice of the blade, thwack of the arrow and the glistening of sweat on near-naked bodies makes Bang Rajan a mostly pleasurable diversion.
While co-writer/director Tanit Jitnukul's vision is unapologetically graphic and slightly marred by an artistic awkwardness, this is a rare and worthwhile glimpse into another nation's historical legend.
Plucked from its cultural context, Bang Rajan is being offered to American audiences as another example of Asian extreme action movies, and gore hounds will find it gratifyingly full of spurting blood and flying limbs.
The acting is facial-expressions- visible-from- 100-feet overdone and the choppy editing makes for awkward storytelling. However, the battle scenes, which make up at least half the movie, are killer.
Jitnukul serves up heaping plates of history and entertainment with this tremendously exciting epic set on the eve of Bangkok's destruction by Burmese forces.
Based upon historical events when a rural village in Siam continually repelled an invading Burmese army in the 18th century, this story is the Thai equivalent to The Alamo and received an unprecedented 11 awards at the Thai film festival upon its release. I think it must've been a very quiet year. Little more than a
series of bare chested sword and musket battle sequences strung together with some unsophisticated attempts at emotional manipulation and soap opera characterisation, Bang Rajan follows the formula of battle sequence, weeping and a-wailing over the dead, corny love scene, macho posturing and repeat. And repeat. And repeat. There is no attempt at setting a historical context to the events, no mention of the political climate and precious little to even give any background to any of the characters. All the Burmese are a bunch of evil, murdering backstabbers and all of the Siamese are noble, saintly heroes and it just feels like an animated war memorial that's all propaganda and no depth. The director shows some ability to represent the battlefield (despite some rather ropey visual effects) but little clue as to how to make the audience actually care who wins.
July 28, 2007
xGary Xx
Super Reviewer
One of the worst asian flims I have seen that shows early life in asian, the fighting of villagers for land rights, guess you can call them tribes. This is about thai's and Burmanise people. Very boring lots of fighting and killing. Sorry I can only give away 2 stars on this one.
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