With murky cinematography, a meandering pace, a dull storyline, and rather wooden performances, The Pang Brothers' Hollywood remake of Bangkok Dangerous is unsuccessful.
With murky cinematography, a meandering pace, a dull storyline, and rather wooden performances, The Pang Brothers' Hollywood remake of Bangkok Dangerous is unsuccessful.
Original Bangkok Dangerous directors Danny and Oxide Pang return to familiar territory with this remake of their own popular 1999 thriller about a ruthless hitman (Nicolas Cage) who travels to Bangkok in order to carry out four crucial jobs. During the course of his missions, the triggerman falls in love with a pretty local girl while also forming a friendly bond with his young errand boy. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
This is as stale as Tuesday's Phad Thai, from its exhausted mythos of the surgically efficient, omnipotent hit man to the training scenes in which Joe explains the trade to the new guy, to the inevitable betrayals of the third act.
There's a charming restaurant scene, some nifty hand-to-hand combat and the cast is great looking. But pretty much all the things that made the original so original are filtered out of this un-original.
Between all the dates and dinners, Bangkok almost ends up being as less thriller and more travelogue; by the hour mark, there are literally more gulps than gunshots.
A toxic blend of hitman midlife crisis, homicidal existential angst and a little surprise sex tourism on the side, this arty assassin fare is held together by sheer force of personality grim reaper guru Cage, no matter how cranky the guy can be.
o Nicolas Cage na periferei tis ektos eleghoy sapoynoperikes toy moytes kai ti geloia malloyra toy, se ena pompodi poiitikistiko ahtarma, poy bromaei ap' opoy ki an ton piaseis
The film isn't overtly heavy-handed in its violence, but it doesn't provoke enough surprises to keep the mind from drifting -- a poison pill for an action film.
Nicolas Cage parece determinado a sabotar a própria carreira... e muitos outros atores já teriam, em seu lugar, sido rebaixados a produções lançadas diretamente em DVD
Not to be a contrarian, but as predictable as the movie is, its events often feel as if there were no alternative. The Pang brothers, besides being artisans of action and suspense, tell a good story -- or maybe I'm simply suffering from heat and Hurricane
Cage is believable as the brooding lone-wolf gunman, but the "hit man screwing himself by growing a conscience on his final kill" ploy needs to be put down for good.
A hitman doing one last job in Bangkok takes on a student in the form of a local small time criminal and tries to escape his violent lifestyle through a relationship with a deaf-mute shop girl. The Pang brothers lobotomise their own well-received Thai action movie and create such a pick and mix of lumbering genre
cliches that the result almost topples over under its own clod-hopping weight. Nicolas Cage sports one of his more ridiculous barnets (and that's up against some VERY stiff competition), looking like he's come straight from auditioning for the headless horseman in Sleepy Hollow and sleep walks through a plot so predictable it couldn't surprise a goldfish. And most criminal of all, the audience have to wait for an hour to see any real action at all and what there is is half-hearted and dull. Bangkok Dangerous doesn't even have the Hollywood gloss you'd expect from a modern action film, having instead a cheap, nasty Steven Seagality about it. It's obvious that the Pang brothers just watched Leon: The Professional and John Woo's The Killer and thought to themselves "We can do that!". Guess again, guys.
September 5, 2008
xGary Xx
Super Reviewer
Very average film which has had a terrible casting mistake in Cage. He just doesnt fit the part in this story, his hair is getting stranger every film he does and the stunts are obviously not him. The film does look good based in Bangkok with its neon skyline and old city areas, the Thai cast is much better than the US
cast, the problem is this kinda feels like a rerun of 'Leon' and nowhere near as good.Its not Cages best film but its average, very average.....and slightly dull.
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