BANGKOK DANGEROUS
0
Posted
September 4, 2008 in
Film
Ten years ago two Thai brothers—Oxide Pang Chung and Danny Pang—wrote and directed a serviceable action flick about a deaf-mute hitman named Kong wreaking revenge on his employers. The Pangs were trained in Hong Kong—along with Korea, Japan, and Shakespearean England, the land Hollywood loves to pillage—which helped their stylish time-waster catch the eye of Nicholas Cage and become the first Thai picture to merit a Yankee redux. Cage’s company snatched it up, screenwriter Jason Richman retooled it to make Kong’s mentor Joe (Cage) the fulcrum, and the Pangs have stayed onboard to direct the scattershot and forgettable popcorn picture a second time. The original studied isolation through gunman Kong’s aural disconnect to the world; here, the on-assignment Cage’s inability to speak Thai attempts to carry the narrative heft, though Cage reads his lines with such a monotone flatness that deafness wouldn’t have been a stretch. A subplot about a revered politician marked for death by local thugs is more of a anti-terrorism rallying point than it was back in the relatively halcyon late-Clinton days, but the Pangs are most invested in bullets, bombs, and the black-suited, black-mulleted Cage striding through popping caps. (Amy Nicholson)
Ten years ago two Thai brothers—Oxide Pang Chung and Danny Pang—wrote and directed a serviceable action flick about a deaf-mute hitman named Kong wreaking revenge on his employers. The Pangs were trained in Hong Kong—along with Korea, Japan, and Shakespearean England, the land Hollywood loves to pillage—which helped their stylish time-waster catch the eye of Nicholas Cage and become the first Thai picture to merit a Yankee redux. Cage’s company snatched it up, screenwriter Jason Richman retooled it to make Kong’s mentor Joe (Cage) the fulcrum, and the Pangs have stayed onboard to direct the scattershot and forgettable popcorn picture a second time. The original studied isolation through gunman Kong’s aural disconnect to the world; here, the on-assignment Cage’s inability to speak Thai attempts to carry the narrative heft, though Cage reads his lines with such a monotone flatness that deafness wouldn’t have been a stretch. A subplot about a revered politician marked for death by local thugs is more of a anti-terrorism rallying point than it was back in the relatively halcyon late-Clinton days, but the Pangs are most invested in bullets, bombs, and the black-suited, black-mulleted Cage striding through popping caps. (Amy Nicholson)
