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Lunch » Tags » Movies » Reviews » Bangkok Dangerous (Single-Disc Edition) (2008)

Bangkok Dangerous (Single-Disc Edition) (2008)

1 rating: -3.0

Action & Adventure and Mystery & Suspense movie directed by Danny Pang and Oxide Pang Chun

An adrenaline-charged action thriller, Lionsgate'sBangkok Dangerousstars Nicolas Cage (Leaving Las Vegas, National Treasure) as "Joe," an anonymous assassin takes an unexpected turn when he travels to Thailand to complete a series of contract killings. … see full wiki

Tags: Movies, Action Movies

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Charlie Yeung, Shahkrit Yamnarm, Panward Hemmanee, Nirattisai Kaljaruek

Director: Danny Pang, Oxide Pang Chun

Genre: Action, Mystery, Adventure

1 review about Bangkok Dangerous (Single-Disc Edition)...

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You've Seen This Film Before

Jan 7, 2009

by ZeeDan
posted in Movie Hype

Rating:

-3

About 30 minutes in, this film jumps the shark. The opening 30 minutes are really very good, excellent film style (unusual photography, sound enhances what you see, interesting lighting, and creative editing), voice over is enlightening, and I was drawn into the film. Once Nicolas Cage is off to Bangkok, the film spirals into something not so good. The original film style and story telling is lost, the film drags on in a story line I've seen 20 or 30 times. It's old hat, the hardened criminal whose heart is melted and turned into gold, in this case, by a young man and a woman. In addition, this is one of the poorest transfers to DVD I've seen in a long time.

What really ruined this film for me, where I stopped believing, Nicolas Cage witnesses a simple pick pocket on the streets of Bangkok. From this one chance meeting and event, he decides to use Kong as his assistant. To the viewer, Kong is a bumbling idiot. For still more confusing reasons, he decides to teach Kong instead of killing him. He also meets a beautiful young woman in a pharmacy that happens to be deaf. He immediately falls in love with her and becomes obsessed with being with her. The obsession is so deep that the hardened assasian breaks all four of his "rules" trying to be with her. From this point, about 30 to 40 minutes in, the film spirals out of control. There's just too many moments where you don't believe the action - the boat scene where he chases a king pin of crime, his escape from the assasination attempt, and the "dead man walking" sequence at the end. There's also way too many moments of doey eyed Nicolas Cage just looking at the camera. We get to watch about 3 or 4 minutes of Nicolas eating spicey Asian food and sweating. I like Nicolas Cage very much, 8MM, National Treasure, Matchstick Men, The Weather Man - all well acted, fine films. He's just made another film like Ghost Rider this time. The film just doesn't stick together.

The DVD transfer - there were many moments where Mpeg-2 compression hurt this film, mostly dark skies that showed color banding artifacts. The sound was very flat and two dimensional, very low quality (this was viewed on a calibrated high end surround system - if the quality was there it would have come through).

DVD Special features, thin, a making of and an alternate ending. The original ending is fine, maybe a bit melodramatic, but fitting. The alternate, happily ever after ending, fits better with the overall film of how could that happen? In this case, how could 100 police not catch somebody stealing a police car right in front of them?

If you loved Ghost Rider, my guess, you'll love this film. If you want your action film to be believeable or at least some closeness to probable, you'll not like this film at all. Instead watch Layer Cake (Widescreen), Snatch (Widescreen Edition), Memento, The Bank Job, or just about any other Jason Statham or Daniel Craig movie for that matter.

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