User Reviews

Besides the action and fun gun fights and the awesome training montage there's another subplot. Love! It sound dorky, but I totally felt for Kong (the main guy) who falls for this pharmacy girl and they start dating awkwardly since he can't hear or talk. She guesses his job is a gas-station man, but he mistakes her "words" for hit-man and he nods. Later when they get jumped by thugs and he saves her by shooting them she freaks out and leaves him. He just saved you! Stupid chick! So he gets depressed and goes back into the hit-man world... Overall a fun slow-action movie that is great for passing time and has a little bit for everyone. Some blood from the fighting, but it's nothing dreadful.

I really loved this movie, i stayed up late one night to watch it, and this is the Original.. not the remake with nicholas cage. I haven't seen that one yet, i probably will, but i really loved this one, i really felt for the main character, i felt sorry for him that he was deaf, i just kept thinking during the movie, please get back together with Fon, she was so sweet and cute, she was perfect for him, all in all great movie, i am a big movie fan, American and foreign. And for me, this was grade A for a foreign film. Bravooooo. I will admit i cried at the end, why did he have to kill himself, i guess, he would've ended up in prison for life anyway.

okay, this was my first thai movie. the nick cage flick is out now and evidently fading fast. i wanted to see the original. i picked this up at suncoast. funny, they had it prominently displayed for those dumb folks who would snatch it up thinking it was the remake. i really hate how movie companies try to take advantage of the people. but i digress. the movie was not all i would have hoped. it was okay, just. i have seen enough movies by now to know mediocre. old boy now, there is a movie for ya! if you are reading this and like Asian cinema, run out and buy/rent/borrow/steal old boy. bangkok dangerous, well, it barely held my interest. it was awfully amateurish, i thought. a deaf mute hit-man was a nice idea. i wanted to slap that guy though to get him to communicate better with people. he just stood there. no "i am a deaf mute" cards or anything. he wasn't stupid, he could read and write. i liked the girlfriend of the deaf guy's buddy. she was hot. the guy, joe, had an interesting look too. anyway, not what i thought it was gonna be. it didn't stink but not the ass kickery i had hoped for.

Pulling out every visual trick and camera angle in the book doesn't save this dull and vapid snoozer.

The box review compares the film to John Woo and Terrantino, but this is far from true. Yes, lots of people get shot and there are even gangsters involved. But Bangkok Dangerous can not come close to Woo's awesome action choreography, nor his, and I thought I'd never say this, depth.

Calling the characters in this movie cardboard cutouts would be an insult to cardboard. True, the melancholy killer theme is reminiscent of Woo's "The Killer", but the comparison ends there, and there is so little character development that the audience hardly cares who gets shot or why.

This movie has even less in common with Terrantino's films, which have infinately more character and a much more interesting plot than this **SPOILER WARNING** "assasin takes revenge on treacherous boss" predictable yawner. Save two hours out of your life and skip Bangkok Dangerous, unless you are absolutely dying to see lots of red, green, and blue lighting and overdone digital editing, which is really the only thing this movie has going for it.

As a dead man's blood seeps across bathroom tiles, the opening titles to BANGKOK DANGEROUS appear in it. From its first scene, this movie is art.

Writers-directors-brothers Danny and Oxide Pang launch BANGKOK DANGEROUS at us with the intensity of an adjective incorrectly following a noun, in the story of a hit-man who finds redemption.

But there's an inventive hook to this old story. Hit-man Kong (Pawalit Mongkolpisit) is a Thai teen who lives in squalor with roommate Joe (Pisek Intrakanchit), a young ex-hit-man whose gun hand was injured when both he and Kong were in a street shootout. Kong has no other friends and his only education was the snarling underbelly of Thailand: brutal mobs, dirty dance clubs, seedy streets, bashings, blood and bullets. And he is deaf and mute. And you thought YOUR teen years were screwed up.

Kong's whacking expertise is shown in the opening scenes, where a poignant dynamic is unveiled, that is, even in his supposedly ruthless hits, Kong does not seem "heartless" or "merciless" - but not because he has a "heart of gold" - it is because he has been so desensitized from a young age to regard whacking as just another job. We discover through flashbacks that Joe and his stripper girlfriend, Aom (Patharawarin Timkul), befriended the young Kong at the shooting range where he worked sweeping bullets, and took him under their wing to become a REAL bullet sweeper.

Kong is a sociopath through nurture not nature.

An excellent scene punctuates this point: Kong takes aim from a rooftop at a mark below. A little girl on another rooftop sees Kong and looks down to see what he is aiming at. Instead of alerting a nearby grownup, she also aims with her little hand. She pulls her imaginary trigger as Kong squeezes his real one. When the mark goes down... she jumps up and down in joy.

This kind of scene is verboten in American movies. But the Hong Kong-born Pang Brothers illustrate that unless anyone tells you something is "bad," how would you know? The violence is portrayed like real violence: quick ,efficient, sudden; no camera playing lovingly over splattered faces. It's indie, it's scarring and raw with forceful sound design and evocative music. It's movie "making" - Kong enters a room with his gun drawn on six guys, who all look up, frozen. Jump cut. Six guys lie strewn around the room, dead, bloodied, without seeing a shot fired. And Kong looks like he has not moved.

When Kong falls for a teen pharmacist, Fon (Premsinee Ratanasopha), his infatuated reaction is believable because of his age and circumstances. He has never attended any special schools for his disabilities, and he is basically a shutaway who only ventures out to kill, so we imagine his seclusion has left him a lonely virgin.

Even though we know Kong's "redemption" must be coming, it does NOT come via the doe eyes of Fon. One idyllic night, as they get close to that moment when anyone who has watched a romantic movie knows they are going to exchange girl germs, they get mugged. And Fon, who has spent the night trying to guess the quiet, shy Kong's job, gets to see first hand his greatest abilities. And she is repulsed.

As John Cusack showed us in the magnificent GROSSE POINTE BLANK, a hit-man can find redemption even whilst in the process of doing that which he is being redeemed from. BANGKOK's powerful redemption scene comes as surprisingly as the rest of its scarring adventures in misanthropy.

The other most affecting thing about BANGKOK is its original soundtrack, which is credited to Orange Music. We have grown so inured to Western Civilization's glossy neo-classical John Williamses and Hans Zimmers and Danny Elfmans that it is a welcome jarring evocative earful when exposed to people who have not been exposed to them.

A rape, a revenge, a setup, a hit gone wrong. An eye for an eye.

When Fon realizes she digs the bad guy, it is too late. The Pangs have packed up, moved to America and scored funding to remake their own movie with a bad mullet...

--Review by Poffy The Cucumber.

The Pang Brothers' debut film is brimming with energy. This version of Bangkok Dangerous was filmed in Thailand, not their homeland of China. It must have been challenging to secure funding and other rudimentary objectives before filming began. Their deaf-mute hit-man concept is unique (at least from my own limited film viewing experience). Bangkok Dangerous reflects the precision and enthusiasm of their direction. I can see how many people enjoy it. I can't say that I'm one of them. I found the movie severely lacking a plot until halfway through, and I didn't like how many action sequences were framed. It's so distracting to watch this subtitled movie while various faces appear. Your eyes are drawn to someone's face in anticipation of, well anything, and you miss dialog. Close up shots are to provide introspection within character or audience or heighten the experience of an action segment. If overused, like they are here, they become a murky amalgamation of meaninglessness. However, I must confess that if you know Thai, you won't experience the framing problem to the degree I did.

Kong is a warm blooded killer from the mean streets of downtown Bangkok. We see him shooting people throughout the opening segments and cannot detect if he has any remorse for his occupation. He looks passé in comparison to the modern hit men of Western cinema. He goes home after a hard day of work to his shared apartment that is inhabited by his "employer" Jo. Jo may not really be his employer. I couldn't tell what his job is. He seems to exist to provide Kong companionship. Oh, and he also brings in business by asking his girlfriend, Aom, to deliver requests to Kong. Aom is a go go dancer (exotic dancer), who is later raped by an angry client. Jo vows revenge and dies trying to avenger her. She is also killed by the angry client. Kong is left alone with no support network until he meets a pharmacist, Fon, who empathizes with him. He loses her when she witnesses him kill two thugs that interrupt their date. Kong is now completely isolated and decides to kill everyone involved with Jo and Aom's deaths before he commits suicide.

Kong's condition offers no dialog. We must sympathize with him like we would a silent movie protagonist. He is portrayed Pawalit Mongkolpisit, who admirably adjusts his facial expression to gain our sympathy. I imagine this is why so many shots are extreme close ups. Since no recognizable plot occurs until midway in, Kong receives no initial characterization. The movie should have commenced with Aom's rape. The slow buildup is inefficacious in creating any reason for its existence. It does eventually evolve into a standard revenge tragedy film with an inconclusive romantic subplot. Fon alerts the police of Kong's final assault, like Jo also serves to advance the plot. Anyone could have done that, why her? She is attracted to Kong, decides he is a bad dude, doesn't even want to look at him, and then realizes her affection. How lazily convenient.

I don't even mind the movie's slow pace. Hitchcock taught us that speed can be terrible in eliminating tension. He also gave us a reason to care about what was happening to his characters. The Pang brothers don't do that. Bangkok Dangerous is amateurish work created by well-intentioned people. It permits many mistakes more experienced directors would not allow. The American remake (by the same directors) amends the storytelling faults of this original production. It isn't very good either, by the way. At least they are improving.