cwbellor

We've got a disgraced paramedic who feels guilty over his friend's life-changing injury during a housing project riot. But that's after he witnesses a murder at the hands of a gang there. Later, he encounters two gangsters (unrelated to the project gang) kidnapping the daughter of a wealthy businessman and accidentally becomes their getaway driver. They end up in the same housing project where the paramedic encountered the gang. Then the mercenaries working for the kidnapped girl's father show up to find the girl and now the paramedic and the kidnappers/gangsters are running from the mercenaries who are now being helped by the head of the gang. By the time that happens we are 1 hour and 40 minutes into this film, and we are STILL being introduced to new characters, albeit minor ones.

This is essentially an intriguing story about a kidnapping taking place within the epic battle between protesters and police with the added layers of drug smuggling, blackmarket organ trading, corporate corruption, police brutality and a pig on fire. Yes, there's a pig on fire. The subjects I mentioned are nothing to scoff at. They deserve to be considered and depicted for the grim realities that they are. But in this movie, they are just distracting us from the heart of the story.

Bangkok Breaking is yet another one in a long line of foreign films I've seen on the platform that are thrilling, even moving and yet pretentiously long and bloated. Others being Hell Dogs (2022) from Japan and Furioza (2021) from Poland. It leaves you wondering if we have Scorsese AND Michael Bay to thank for the directors having ambitions that far exceed those of anything we would expect of them. Scorsese and Bay are stylistically unrelated and never mentioned in the same sentence. Nevertheless, there is possibly a generation of foreign directors who show incredible promise but can't resist including 50+ speaking parts (Scorsese) and snappy editing with slow motion explosions (Bay).

Having said this, they can still be credited with offering a window into uniquely foreign subcultures. Bangkok Breaking offers up thrills, tears, laughs and a pig on fire, but the running time and epic scope are exhausting.

That imdb average means that some viewers inexplicably gave this obscure low-budget movie a much too generous rating. I mean, I wouldn't cry foul if it at least had some campy charm, but it's too monotonous and dull to even recognize any of that. Furthermore, we've seen this crap before. The flying membrane aliens are lifted straight out of the Star Trek episode, Operation Annihilate (S1. E29). Oh wait, wait... we're supposed to regard this movie as introducing the concept of an alien hunter years before Predator came out. Well, not only is that an underdeveloped concept in the film - barely even reflected in the alien's behavior - it's not even apparent as the thesis of the film. "You think we're the only ones who exist in this universe? Well, I got news for ya! We ain't! We ain't alone!" That line, delivered early in the film is considered so poignant that it caps off this film right before the credits hit and it has nothing to do with that. So, no, it's not as if the alien-as-hunter idea was front and center here. This is an unexceptional movie and I will forever be baffled at it's rating here.