Cheap Bangkok Dangerous (DVD) (Pawalit Mongkolpisit, Premsinee Ratanasopha) (Danny Pang, Oxide Pang Chun) Price

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Customer Reviews of Bangkok Dangerous

Very cool and violent action movie!
Bangkok Dangerous is a cool blast of daring and violent cinema that will have you enjoying every moment of its ultra-low budget "deaf"-defing trickery. The premise is simple - a dumb Thai hitman does not suffer from gun recoil because he does not hear the sound of his own gunfire and so has deadly accurate aim. He goes around Thailand knocking off criminals and crimelords but then has the fatal error of getting mixed up in some nasty business where innocent and important political people are killed. In the background there is the story of his brother assassin who is temporarily out of a job and a girl who works in the local chemist that he falls for.

You have to see it for the camera work and editing and violent special effects. It really does dazzle and there is lots of techno in the soundtrack. To be honest this little gem from Thailand simply mashes most Hollywood action flicks. Great!

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The new hope for Asian action?
The Thai film industry has been hyped as the new hope for Asian cinema, picking up where the Hong Kong wave of the late 1980s ended. Twins Danny and Oxide Pang, former Hong Kong residents who have immigrated to Thailand, have scrutinized the lessons of action film master John Woo. "Bangkok Dangerous" aggressively emulates the stylish overkill of those action masters but lacks much of the heart that set the best Woo films apart from the HK pack. The film`s protagonist, Kong, is a deaf-mute hitman who, despite the thick envelopes of cash he receives for his contracts, lives in a Bangkok tenement with his best friend and fellow assassin Joe. Joe and Kong receive their assignments from Joe`s girlfriend Aom, a hostess at one of Bangkok`s many strip clubs. Kong, the latest in a long line of romantic killers, soon falls for Fon, a sweet young girl who is frightened off when she learns what Kong does for a living. While Kong peruses Fon, Joe`s relationship with Aom disintegrates and many, many slick and stylish shootouts transpire. The Pang brothers utilize all the flashy techniques for which Asian action films are notorious but without succeeding in making the slow-motion, jump cuts and loud impressionistic soundtrack mean anything. The sense that you`ve seen it all before hits particularly hard in a sequence which cribs heavily from the most famous gunplay sequence in "A Better Tomorrow," but never attains Woo`s balletic brilliance.

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Terrific performances, well paced use of silence
Bangkok is a city of noisy nightclubs, but under the surface are millions of people struggling to live normal lives. This film is about the people who live in that city, in its margins, and its a fascinating and very satisfying film for fans of noir-ish dramas. Featuring extraordinary performances by Pawalit Mongkolpisit as a deaf-mute, but uncannily dead-shot talented janitor (Kong), recruited by Jo (Pisek Intrakanchit) to be hit-man, this film succeeds on at least two levels. One is the level of his relationship with Pisek's girlfriend (Aom), played by the beautiful Patharawarin Timkul. It also succeeds on the level of Kong's relationship with Fon, played by exquisite Premsinee Ratanasopha. The acting is sincere and honest where it could have easily been overwhelmed by the directors Danny Pang and Oxide Pang Chun, who show their skills behind the camera, but in sometimes overelaborate and distracting ways. The version I saw was carelessly edited to remove profanity and possibly objectionable violence, but I truly enjoyed it and would like to see a complete version, perhaps with actor and directors' commentary subtitled.