Schmollywood Babylon

Vengeance of an Assassin (Panna Rittikrai, 2014)

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.

Cannibal Mercenary (Chao Meekunsoot, 1988)

One of the most legendary Thai cult films people know about is Cannibal Mercenary. There’s a lot of incorrect information out there, but the director is Chao Meekunsoot - a quite popular action director, working for big companies like Five Star and Sahamongkol Films, but when the business declined he became independent and started shooting quick, violent films for the rural market in Thailand - this was at the end of the eighties and Employ to Die (aka รับจ้างตาย) was one of them. In the lead we see Chatchai Plengpanich, a pretty big TV-star at the time - mostly for his work in the popular action TV-series Tee Vai (aka ตี๋ใหญ่, 1985). So now everyone knows that, okay? Correct the whole internet, please.

Plengpanich plays Wilson, a depressed and hard hitting soldier who accepts one final mission. He's deeply disturbed by his experiences in Vietnam, but goes out in the once jungle again so he can get money and save his sick daughter. He gather his old gang of misfits; a sex-maniac, a wife-killer and so on, and they starts the journey. On their way they meet a lot of Vietcongs, innocent villagers and traitors... and finally the main bad guy and his hoard of cannibal henchmen!

I think few fanboys out there have realized that Cannibal Mercenary is - more or less - a rip-off on Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. The first scene is very similar to Coppola’s movie, with our leading man being depressed in a sad hotel room somewhere, with the fan in roof slowly spreading the hot air, making it even more sweaty and dirty. On the wall is a poster very similar to the Apocalypse Now poster also, with the rising sun over the jungle. The mission Plengpanich goes on is to kill a renegade high military who have barricaded himself out in the jungle together with his followers. But there the similarities end, because Cannibal Mercenary is one crazy, low budget ride to hell!

If you’ve seen once war movie from the Philippines and Thailand you’ve seen them all, to be frank. but Cannibal Mercenary proudly goes too far, like Meekunsoot was fucking angry at the time. Like he wanted to show all those bastard big companies that his movie can beat them all. And in a way he was right, because still today this one - not even the sequel to it - is talked about, discussed and analyzed. Not that it’s much too analyze! Chatchai Plengpanich is really good as the complex, kinda sad hero, and his colleagues on the mission are shallow but crazy motherfuckers.

It’s so filled with action it never becomes boring, and boy, is it bloody! Yeah, this deserves to be called jungle splatter with it’s fine sortiment of decapitations, stabbings, limb-choppings, squibs, explosions, fights and no less than two scenes involving people pissing on each other! The torture scenes is extreme and no one escapes the violence, from adults to kids. The only movie I can compared it with is Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo from 2008, but I consider Cannibal Mercenary a better movie - mostly because it misses the conservative, republican message that violence is good for you.

I once sat on a café in Bangkok dealing with the rights owner to Cannibal Mercenary, an old frail man with a plastic bag filled with VCD’s of the movies he had the rights not. Nothing came out of it, he wanted too much money for me and he could only deliver a cut master anyway. But if anyone out there, a serious distribution company, wants to get the rights and put together a composite of the bootleg available on DVD (ignore the version called Jungle Killers, it lacks the gore and adds scenes of some stupid western “actors” walking around in the jungle), just contact me and I will give you the contact info to one who can help you.

Cannibal Mercenary delivers everything you expect it to deliver, that makes it so good!

Out of the Darkness (Chatrichalerm Yukol, 1971)

When Chatrichalerm Yukol directed Out of the Darkness in 1971 he wasn’t even thirty and had some experience from television. He wanted to make something that never been made in Thailand and decided for a sci-fi movie. This was way before Star Wars and all that bullshit, so of course sci-fi basically meant a good old monster movie. “It was terrible” Yukol said about his cinematic debut, but I think that’s not fair. Out of the Darkness is more or less a classic American monster movie from the fifties – just set in Thailand with a little bit more blood and Sorapong Chatree dressed in way too tight swimming trunks.

A meteorite falls from the sky and hits a small group of islands outside Thailand. Professor Thongchai and his assistant Sek (Sorapong Chatree) observes this and travels to the coast to investigate it. Soon people (including the typical young loving couple out on the beach for a night of sinful lust!) starts to disappear, killed and eaten by a tentacle blob! When Thongchai and Sek arrives to the island everyone in the village is dead, just the rotting skeletons is left! But the alien also takes control over people and transforms them to killing machines that shoots green lasers from their eyes! Will our hunky hero Sek be able to stop the alien invasion? Will he find the girl of his dreams? Just watch the movie and you’ll see…

 

Out of the Darkness might be silly, but it’s not sillier than any random American classic from the fifties. Instead the setting, actors and colors make it an interesting version of something that, at the time, was really outdated. Sorry to say, it was a big flop – but looking back at the movie it’s easy to see how competent and well-made it is, with wonderful cinematography and some good monster-moments. The creature itself is in the Roger Corman-school of monsters, not that movable and very cheap. But for once it’s actually kept in the darkness and that makes it a lot more effective in this case, with it’s big glowing eye and all the tentacles flying out to squeeze people to death.

The humans taken over by the alien is also quite cool, even if they mostly just walk around like robots. What makes it work is the visual effects, the glowing green eyes and the lasers. In a, for the time, original scene one of the humans is set on fire but continues to walk around shooting his eye-lasers! Yes, it reminded me of Terminator. But I doubt James Cameron ever saw this movie!

 

It runs two hours and twenty minutes and has song numbers and romance, but it flows fine and never get boring. The direction is flawless and intelligent, with nothing unnecessary shown – everything seem to have a purpose and the actors, especially a very young Sorapong, holds up the story both in the drama and action. In a supporting part future baddie  Dam Datsakorn impresses and if I’m not mistaken, veteran actor Sukon Koewliam has a small part but disappears after a while.

 

Nowadays Out of the Darkness is considered a minor Thai classic and I think the reputation will grow in the future.  I’m sure everyone who enjoys the old American sci-fi’s would love this movie and so every monster fan out there. If you can find the long OOP DVD, buy it directly. The quality is good and in correct ratio and has – surprise – English subs!

 

This review was previously published on The Mee Noi Thai Movie Review.

Tom Yum Goong 2 (Prachya Pinkaew, 2013)

To watch Tom Yum Goong 2 is to have safe sex. It's totally risk free.

Director Prachya Pinkaew have, to reach a bigger audience, made a sequel to Tom Yum Goong that's totally meaningless. I'm not talking about the pointless storyline, that's okay for me. It's an action movie. But non-characters doing nothing except running from green screens is hardly not what I think Tony Jaa represents.

Tony Jaa and Prachya Pinkaew desperately trying to emulate the American way of making action films and totally forgets what we first loved about Jaa, the willingness to go that extra step. Just like Jackie Chan in his youth, just like Iko Uwais in Indonesia nowadays.

Maybe Jaa is too occupied with world domination preparing for Fast & Furious 7 to actually care of what made him a star from the beginning? I don't deny there's a few fight scenes here and there that's very good. It's competent people fighting - not always Jaa himself - but nothing dares to stand out. It's laziness.

Personally I never bothered with cheesy CGI, because story is the most important thing. But in a movie like Tom Yum Goong 2 where story is more transparent than Vladimir Putin's sexual preferences what's left is stuntmen connected to wires fighting in a green screen room made to look like it have burning walls.

Even if I love and respect Jaa, this is so far from what I want from him to do I actually think I'm just gonna give a shit about every upcoming home he has in the pipeline. Why should I give him money if he only sees a fat bank account than true martial arts.

Tom Yum Goong 2 (aka The Protector 2) is lazy, stupid, empty and non-spectacular. If you want to watch new, good martial arts from 2013, check out Ninja 2 or Man of Thai Chi - yes, even Keanu Reeves directs superior martial arts films than former master Prachya Pinkaew. I hope someone can save Tony Jaa. Or maybe it's time for a new action hero from Thailand?

I'm open for suggestions.

Unhuman (Toranong Sricher, 2004)

Unhuman (made in 2002, 2004 or 2005 according to different sources) is probably the crazies Thai genre movie ever made. It's so utterly bizarre in it's mix of genres you won't believe it! It have everything from aliens, mutants, killer gorilla, terrorists, task forces, jungle action, gore and splatter, black magic, cute Thai students, cute cops, romance, sorrow, slapstick, a friggin' earthquake, meteorites, lots of kills and of course at least one soft pop song. 

After watching it again I really don't know what to write, so instead of writing a new review (you can read my old revew over at Ninja Dixon), I just took a screenshot of the comments I wrote on my personal Facebook page while watching it. Sorry for grammar and spelling, but I had not time to think about that while trying to not make my brain explode from the genius that is Unhuman!

The Kick (Prachya Pinkaew, 2011)

Last year I visited Thailand for the second time and even if I bought at least 50 movies there, met movie legends and had a blast in every way possible, I think The Kick one of the first Thai movies I've watched in almost a year. It's not that I got tired of Thai films, it's that I miss Thailand (and Bangkok) so damn much. Watching these flicks makes me go into some kind of post-Thailand depression - and it happens every time. I never travel to Thailand to drink cheap booze or lay on the beach, for me it's about meeting fanastic people, getting lost in the labyrinth of Bangkok streets... I feel at home there, which is odd - I dislike when it's people everywhere. But Bangkok makes me feelt at home. Need to go there soon again...

The Kick is director Prachya Pinkaew (Ong-Bak, Tom yum goong) latest movie to be released, and it was in 2011 (I'm ignoring Elephant White from the same year, which just felt like another boring American action film). But it's never been released in any easy accessible English (or Swedish)-friendly release - until I noticed that Swedish company Njuta Films would release it! One way or another it found it's way to me and hey, this isn't bad at all!

A South Korean Taekwondo family have emigrated to Thailand to (I guess) run a school and stuff like that. By a coincidence they help saving a national treasure, an ancient knife (the McGuffin of this movie, it could have been an elephant, a Buddha or something else - it's just not that important). The baddies wants revenge and the knife, and attacks the family and kidnaps their youngest kid - and the family is forced to help them steal the knife again! But of course they want to make everything right - together with their Thai relatives, masters of Muay Thai!

The films of Pinkaew (and stunt choreographer Rittikrai) have never been famous for their elaborate plots and it's the same with The Kick. It's a very simple story, almost too simple, but works because one of the best casts so far in one of their movies. The South Korean actors are all very good, and handles both the drama and action very well. The main Thai actors are the BRILLIANT JeeJa Yanin, one of the best female fighters I've seen and also a fine actress, and the famous comedian Petchtai Wongkamlao aka Mum Jokmok. I like him, but he's a very aquired taste - and I'm happy to say that he's bringing us a low-key, realistic performance here with very little of his trademark comedy - and he's great. I hope to see him do stuff like this more. He's perfect as a grumpy middle-aged uncle.

But like all of these films the action is the number one star. Now, this is a family friendly action film so don't expect the bloodshed and ultra-violence of the Ong-Bak or Born to Fight, but it doesn't mean it's spectacular. The fights are as usual filmed in a way so we can see what's happening and they're getting gradually more spectacular the further the story goes. The highlight is the when the teenage son uses his dance moves to fight a bunch of baddies in the jungle. It's a brilliant example of how Pinkaew and Rittikrai always tries to evolve the fights, makes them a bit more unique than the usual stuff. Another fun scene is in a kitchen when Mum Jokmok and the South Korean mother creates a chaotic symphony by destroying everything around them in order to kick the shit out of the bad guys. 

It's a lot of action and some very fine stunts during the last half of the movie. So I'm sure you won't be disappointed. It's a fine co-production between South Korea and Thailand and I'm surprised I haven't it seen it getting better distributon outside Asia. I hope more fans of creative martial arts will get a chance to see it.