Hola all. Massawyrm here.

Nicholas Cage hasn’t exactly been on what I would call a winning streak as of late. Sure, if it were any number of other mainstream actors I might not even notice, and even if I did someone would point to the box office and argue that no matter how bad they might be, his movies are still making money. But Cage isn’t one of those average doin’-it-for-the-money kind of guys. He’s a great actor who often takes really risky roles in films other people don’t get. As much as we might joke about Ghost Rider or National Treasure 2 or Next or The Wicker Man or The Ant Bully or Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, this is the guy who took a chance on Adaptation and 8mm and Leaving Las Vegas. He really gets the fringe stuff, the films that Hollywood will get AFTER they see it. Which is why I can completely understand why he would take a film like Bangkok Dangerous.

On the surface it is exactly the kind of film he needed. After three critically panned action films in a row, the guy could use a break. He could use something slick, stylish, adult and edgy to bring him back into the fold. Sadly, Bangkok Dangerous manages to be all of these things without ever actually being good at the same time. It is a tired, yawn inducing retread of a classic crime cliché that fails to hit any of the emotional notes it is playing upon and instead comes up hollow and soulless. It’s not trying to be an empty, mindless action film. It just happens to be one.

The bastard son on John Woo and Luc Besson, this is the story of a world class hitman who decides that it is time to call it quits, so he goes for one big final score – four hits in Bangkok for a mysterious crime lord. You pretty much know the story from there – or at least a dozen other versions of it. This thing borrows so heavily from the crime/hitman films of the late 80’s early 90’s that it is not even funny. The Killer, Bullet in the Head, A Better Tomorrow, La Femme Nakita, Leon: The Professional. It’s all here. Every film liberally borrowed from. None of them repaid in kind with anything new. Not that these films were particularly original to begin with – at least in terms of story. But what they had was a style all their own, new takes on the character of the assassin and unique action beats that showed us things we’ve never seen before. Bangkok Dangerous lacks all of these things.

Oh sure, the film is stylish, insomuch as you can say it was shot with style. But there’s nothing that stands out about it or makes you feel like you’re watching this story through a new pair of eyes. And Nicolas Cage has exactly two settings: Manic and Mumbling Whiner. Let me give you a hint. He’s not manic here. And someone thought it would be a good idea for him to narrate. And in an age when we have all these great Thai action films making their way over here, we are served up with a film lacking a single readily identifiable action set piece that hasn’t been done a million times over.

But none of this makes the film bad. No, on their own these elements are simply boring with a capital Z. What pushes this over the edge is the film’s spectacularly awful final five minutes in which the entire story just goes to hell in a handcart. The Pang Brothers (the guys responsible for The Eye, The Eye 2, The Eye 3 and last year’s mind numbing horror entry The Messengers) spend the bulk of the film creating this vast and entirely inauthentic emotional situation only to try to force ten gallons of angst down your throat at the very last moment. And you never for a moment buy into it. The film opens with Nicolas Cage narrating the rules of how to survive as a hitman only to inexplicably break every single last rule by the end of the film. He falls for a deaf mute drugstore employee for no other reason than she looks cute. He decides to begin training his untrustworthy fuckup of an errand boy (chosen BECAUSE he needed a fuckup loser of an errand boy that nobody would miss) simply because the guy asks. And when everything begins to go to shit, rather than running out as he has repeated to us time and again that he must do, he sticks around and mysteriously, without explanation, grows a conscience. Which of course leads to unimaginative shootout after unimaginative shootout after unimaginative shootout and one hell of a trite, drama queen ending that tries really hard to be an old school John Woo heartbreaker, but instead will have you leaving in head shaking disgust.

Unlike a movie like Matchstick Men where you watch Cage break his rules because he was conned, here he just becomes stupid. I know, I know. He’s supposed to be a monster becoming human…but it sure as hell doesn’t play that way. And one of the least satisfying things in cinema to watch is a character who has been built up to be almost superhuman fall because of a ridiculous and sudden lack of rationality. It just doesn’t make any sense. While I see what they were going for, every emotion they try to bring out feels forced and entirely contrived for the sake of the story. There isn’t a single genuine moment in this, not a minute that I care for Cage or anyone around else him. And odds are neither will you.

As lifeless as the eyes of a bored stripper, this thing simply goes through the motions but never sells you on what is going on right in front of you. This won’t raise your pulse, and it isn’t half as cool as it thinks it is. Odds are, by the time I wake up this morning I’ll have forgotten most of it already.

Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.

Massawyrm

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