The only good thing from a certain horrible relationship I once had, many years ago, was that it introduced me to the works of Panna Rittikrai. We traveled to Thailand together and there saw something with Rittikrai and fell in love directly! I quickly tried to get all the movies I could find at night markets and obscure, hard-to-find, movie shops, directed or starring this Thai Jackie Chan, often on VCD and in mediocre quality. When so finally Ong Bak was unleashed on the world I wasn’t alone any more in my fascination for Rittikrai, he was of course the man behind all the stunts and fighting in Tony Jaa’s seminal martial arts classic, under the supervision of blockbuster director Prachya Pinkaew. Around the same time Rittikrai got the offer to direct a movie of his own, and the result became Born to Fight - an in name only remake of one of his earlier films, this time focusing his energy on stuntman Dan Chupong. And the last movie he made, after dying from kidney failure last year, was Vengeance of an Assassin, also starring Chupong and in the same brutal style as Born to Fight. But can it live up to the hype?
The story is overly complicated and I never got a chance to fully understand it, but I guess this plot summary on IMDB kinda explains it: “Natee (Dan Chupong) became a killer for one reason- to discover who killed his parents. As he gets closer to uncovering a secret network of power and corruption, he's double-crossed on a job, making him a target and putting everyone he loves in danger. Betrayed, exposed, and hunted by the deadliest killers in the business, now Natee has a new code. Be faster. Stronger. Hit harder. Survive."
In many ways Vengeance is a fantastic film. The fights are violent and graphic, with blood drawn constantly and some truly neck-breaking stunts makes you feel the pain home in the safety of your sofa. I love Dan Chupong, he’s a great actor - with a lot more depth and charisma than the wonderful Jaa, and even if he clearly uses stuntmen from time to time he rules the movie. Several of the younger actors from Rittikrai’s fun, but ultimately too stupid and quite homophobic, Bangkok Knockout shows up, in bigger better parts. My favorite from that movie was Chatchapol Kulsiriwuthichai, a long-legged goofy-looking actor and stuntman, whose appearance seems unlikely but fights like a fucking monster. In Vengeance he gets a better part, a trashy gangster with a neck tattoo and a hipster haircut and boy he’s good.
So how’s the action? It’s up and down. There’s a couple of fights which is extremely good, and because most of them are set in very rough environments like car repair shops, factories etc they hurt a lot to watch. There’s also the traditional gimmick scene, this time the boys are playing football in the most impossible way inside a factory. Two of the scenes are very long takes, involving lots and lots of squibs and stunts - imagine the one take scene in Tom Yum Goong, but more or less without fighting. Chupong and Rittikrai did a similar scene in Born to Fight. I guess the biggest scene was suppose to be the train fight, but because most of it is shot in front of a green screen and with some very primitive computer graphics trying to fool us they’re real around it falls flats. Which is a damn pity. Could have been epic!
But for anyone with an interest in martial arts movies this will give a kick of energy. If you’ve been following the career of Rittikrai you might have noticed how he tried out stunts in many movies until they’re perfect, and often ending up in his bigger movies - like this one or stuff with Tony Jaa (that whole chase sequence in Ong Bak is something Rittikrai borrowed from one or two earlier movies he himself starred in during the late 80’s and early 90’s for example). Vengeance also throws in small references to stunts and gags originally invented by Jackie Chan, and in here we both see football fighting on hot coal, a scene where a lot of glass panes is broken in similar style as in Police Story etc. Rittikrai always took the best and made it even more insane.
Vengeance of an Assassin might not be that last big masterpiece Rittikrai should have directed, but compared to a lot of other action films it’s superior and delivers some truly spectacular ass-kicking and squibilicisious carnage.
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