I recently saw this action comedy from Thailand at the St. Louis International Film Festival and It knocked on me on my rear end, this film was one wild, unpredictable movie, take John Woo, Wong Kar Wai, Wong Jing and throw them all in the blender at full speed to blend them for a movie that will hit you like a swallow of beer after a shot of sake.
To simply slap this film with the action comedy label is doing it a great injustice because this is not a by the numbers Hollywood cookie style "action comedy" that would ever be made in Tinseltown and probably would be consumed by the mainstrea m moviegoer, it it just too complex for such a simple pigeonhole categorization. This has to be one of the more unpredictable films to come around in a long time and it reminds of the movies that Hong Kong used to make back in their "golden age" in the late 80's to the mid 90's that was my antidote to the Hollywood actioners that just simply rehashed cliche after cliche without much style or imagination. It even the evil foreigner cannon villian just like the Hong Kong action films so a Hong Kong action buff should feel at home. This film has a frantic pace that never lets up and like some of John Woo's best work, will you leave exhausted when it's over. I was just amazed at how the film would change tone so seamlessly, mixing off the comedy, violent action, and touching drama and sometimes one scene would juggle all three going at once, never dropping the ball once.
The film is basically about a hitman, Kit Silencer looking searching for the man who killed his mother when he was a child, who had a pitch forked shaped tattoo on his wrist and what happens when he crosses paths with a group of four other bumbling hitmen at a botched hit on a police chief. One of the four losers is an Elvis impersonator who carries an M-16 in his guitar case and that character alone made it worth the price of admission.
Even though this isnt a pure action movie per say, it still has a high body count, higher than some of the so-called action movies and takes chances where say a Hong Kong lite Hollywood homogenized product like Charile's Angels wouldnt in switching genres, allowing some of its main characters to get killed off.
The only problem with this movie, is unless you see it at a film festival you will probably not see it with English subtitles although it is available on DVD and VCD it doesn't have English subtitles which is a shame because I saw a lesser thai action comedy which didnt deserve an English subtitled release in my opinion. I hope Thailand will continue making movies like this and Dang Bireley, Im just glad that there are more world class films available from a country that I and many others alike thought never made movies.
