September 5, 2008
Distributor(s): Lionsgate
Production Co.: Bangkok Dangerous, Inc.
Director(s): Danny Pang, Oxide Pang Chun
Staring: Nicolas Cage, Charlie Young, Chakrit Yamnarm, Dom Hetrakul
Lionsgate has provided us with this first look at an R-rated new clip from Bangkok Dangerous, the action-thriller coming to theaters on September 5.
Synopsis
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
In the film, directed by Danny and Oxide Pang, the life of an anonymous assassin takes an unexpected turn when he travels to Thailand to complete a series of contract killings. Joe (Nicolas Cage), a remorseless hitman, is in Bangkok to execute four enemies of a ruthless crime boss named Surat. He hires Kong, a street punk and pickpocket, to run errands for him with the intention of covering his tracks by killing him at the end of the assignment. Strangely, Joe, the ultimate lone wolf, instead finds himself mentoring the young man while simultaneously being drawn into a tentative romance with a local shop girl. As he falls further under the sway of Bangkok's intoxicating beauty, Joe begins to question his isolated existence and let down his guard... just as Surat decides it's time to clean house.
The film is a remake of the 1999 Thai film and will be directed by the same two who helmed the original, Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang. Variety reports Cage will play a cold-blooded hit man who heads to Bangkok to pull off four jobs, and winds up falling in love with a local girl and bonding with his errand boy.
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Live dangerously with Nic Cage in ‘Bangkok’
Lionsgate, the studio that continues to bring us “Saw” movies, has done a disservice to filmmakers Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang, and leading-man Nicolas Cage by not screening their film “Bangkok Dangerous” for the press (I saw it on opening day).
This is the sort of treatment you give films that are embarrassments, which is to say half the movies in release.
But “Bangkok Dangerous” isn’t an embarrassment. A derivative action film about a soulful hit man (Cage) who becomes enchanted by Bangkok and two of its inhabitants while on assigment, the film is not going to win awards for acting or originality.
“Bangkok Dangerous” is in many ways a fascinating hybrid. Said to be a remake of the 1999 Pang brothers movie about a hit man who is deaf and mute who befriends his errand boy while on assignment in Thailand, the plot of both versions recalls the 1972 Michael Winner-directed Charles Bronson film “The Mechanic.”
Instead of a deaf and mute hero, this new film gives us a deaf and mute heroine (Charlie Yeung of “Ashes of Time”), a lovely Bangkok pharmacy worker with whom Cage falls in love, a decidedly John Woo-sian twist on the old hit-man-in-love theme.
Other elements evoke the legendary Hong Kong shoot-’em-ups of Woo as well, including the fraternal bond between Cage’s killer Band his messenger-turned-student (charismatic Thai actor Shahkrit Yamnarm) and a climax in which Cage’s “good” hit man gets his Clint Eastwood on with dual handguns blazing.
Shot by Pang brothers collaborator Decha Srimantra (“The Eye”), “Bangkok Dangerous” has a bluish tint that hints of compromised production values. In addition, Cage’s black-dyed, shoulder-length hairstyle makes him look like a cousin of Marilyn Manson.
But the film was shot on location in Bangkok, and money cannot buy the neon-lighted streets and dense atmosphere that this “Blade Runnner”-esque metropolis offers.
The Pang brothers, like many filmmakers from the Far East, have a fine grasp of dialogue-free storytelling - a function of trying to avoid an abundance of subtitles. But the Pangs know how to “compose” with images and facial expressions instead of words, and they also have a pictorial flair for the genre’s hard-core violence.
Cage acts in the Eastwood minimalist style as well. His hit man shoots first and talks later, if at all.
Bangkok DangerousFrom the directors of The Eye, Oxide Pang and Danny Pang, comes this action-packed
The life of an anonymous assassin takes an unexpected turn when he travels to Thailand to complete a series of contract killings. Joe (Nicolas Cage), a remorseless hitman, is in Bangkok to execute four enemies of a ruthless crime boss named Surat. He hires Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm), a street punk and pickpocket, to run errands for him with the intention of covering his tracks by killing him at the end of the assignment.
Strangely, Joe, the ultimate lone wolf, instead finds himself mentoring the young man while simultaneously being drawn into a tentative romance with a local shop girl. As he falls further under the sway of Bangkok’s intoxicating beauty, Joe begins to question his isolated existence and let down his guard …just as Surat decides it’s time to clean house.film of the Bangkok underworld. Bangkok Dangerous, which stars Nicolas Cage, is the remake of the 2001 film of the same title.
