One of the most elaborate productions ever mounted in Thailand, Tears of the Black Tiger is a candy-colored Western made in the high-energy style that characterizes much contemporary Thai cinema. The plot is a traditional boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-again story that references both classic American Westerns and Thai folk tales. Poor boy Dum (Chartchai Ngamsan) and rich girl Rumpoey (Stella Malucchi) first lay eyes on each other as children when her family escapes Bangkok to his
country hometown during World War II. When they meet again ten years later, they fall instantly in love and decide to marry. But the disapproval of her parents and a band of rampaging bandits led by the villainous Mahesuan (Supakorn Kitsuwon) combine to threaten their plans for future happiness. ~ Tom Vick, Rovi
Has lots of pop energy and an admirable poker-face when it comes to its Douglas Sirk-ian storyline. And even though it's essentially a Frankenstein's monster stitched together from a zillion other movies, you really haven't seen anything like it.
A parody of and winking homage to the history of Thai melodrama, Wisit Sasanatieng's uproarious filmmaking debut exuberantly combines pop and kitsch with a wholesome belief in the thrills of bad art.
[Director] Sasanatieng engages the viewer's emotions fully in the squaring away of the eternal triangle, involving young people who emerge as three-dimensional individuals even though they are archetypal.
Tears of the Black Tiger ultimately works best as an exercise in cinematic style, making it not only a quirky little nostalgia trip but a noteworthy cult flick worth checking out.
The movie is a riot of tropical turquoise, magenta and pink, spiced with marigold, red and green. You'd swear it was drenched in a tangy tamarind sauce
Delirious and oddball at once, it's like a plate of meringues -- delicious at first, but soon everything tastes the same, and after a while you get sick.
This is the kind of movie that restores my faith in cinema. A love letter to old Thai flicks and spaguetti westerns, "Tears" is the right mix of homage and style. This is not a "parody", and seems that western movie templates can't tolerate the existance of movies like this one without sticking the "parody" label. This
movie was not spilled by some recycling-nostalgia-pop culture machine, made to sell false images of new "coolness" to kids. This a honest work of love and dedication, that happens to have fun with the material.
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