In short: BKO: Bangkok Knockout (2010)

A posse of Thai martial artists wins some sort of competition in the hopes of getting that coveted Hollywood movie contract. Little do they suspect that the following celebration will leave them all drugged and unconscious. Awake again, the group (plus an annoying comic relief fiddler - no, I'm not joking) find themselves in a complex of derelict, budget-conscious industrial buildings.

Soon enough bad guys attack and drag the two women of the group away, provoking everyone to run around in all directions and stumble into various fights and traps.

Everything is - of course - part of an evil plan by the organizer of the competition from the beginning of the movie to let our heroes fight evil martial artists (under the tutelage of multi-talented director Panna Rittikrai) to the death so that a handful of rich racist foreigners can bet on the outcome. There will be much kicking and badly written betrayal before the film is through.

Let's the start off with something positive about BKO: veteran director/action director/producer/writer/martial artist/on-screen bad guy Panna Rittikrai still really knows how to do cheap, sometimes gimmicky, yet always exciting action scenes. There's little of the obfuscation of what's going on in fights that's (unfortunately) still so popular in martial arts cinema on display in BKO, for Rittikrai knows that his audience has come to actually see people doing interesting stuff with their - and to other people's - bodies.

Consequently, whenever the film concerns itself with people jumping, kicking, hitting and setting others on fire, BKO's pretty awesome to watch. It's the sort of martial arts movie that tries to include at least one fun gimmick in each fight, so - apart from the expected - the film has scenes of martial artists fighting a car, martial artists fighting an axe-swinging killer out of a slasher movie (I dubbed him Jason Axe), martial artists fighting Jason Axe while he's on fire, martial artists fighting guys on dirt bikes, martial artists stealing Panna Rittikrai's inhaler, and so on.

Unfortunately, Rittikrai feels the need to pad out an hour of highly entertaining (if completely stupid) action with forty long and painful minutes of boring stuff, mostly in form of making the audience watch the evil foreigners (with quota evil Thai guy, don't worry) sit in a container and talk nonsense, horrid comic relief, and various painful attempts at pretending anybody is interested in the young non-characters played by the young non-actors that are our supposed heroes. I had difficulty keeping these non-entities apart throughout the movie, which surely wasn't made easier by the fact that not one of our heroes has anything amounting to a single character trait, or at least a fighting gimmick. The latter, it seems are something only the bad guys are allowed to have here.

Obviously, regularly stopping the proceedings for a little chat between characters you just want to shut up and fight whenever the film has just become exciting is not exactly a good idea, especially not in an action movie that has nothing else to offer. It's particularly frustrating because the action in BKO is often good enough to let it stand among the best of the last wave of Thai action movies. For me, though, the boring parts suck too much fun out of the film to recommend it.

 

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Three Films Make A Post: They Thought They Were Alone

Iron Man 2 (2010): No wonder mainstream critics looked less favourably on Jon Favreau's second Iron Man movie than they did on the first one. Instead of going in the direction of the serious and the dark (and we all know only the serious and the dark can be good, unless your making comedies about neurotic New Yorkers not featuring any explosions), Favreau goes on an all-out binge of the silly and the slightly to heavily ridiculous while trying to tell about half a dozen stories at once without including much of an actual plot holding them together. Not surprisingly, this leads to a highly distractible film that is lacking in coherence and dramatic power and prefers spending its time on play and having (often dumb) fun with whatever it can get its hands on.

Fortunately, I do like the silly and the ridiculous parts of superhero fiction as much as I do the more serious interpretations of the concept, and approve of a director spending ridiculous amounts of big company media money on playing around, so I had just about as much fun with the film as Favreau, Downey and the gang seem to have had.

Machete (2010): I know, as someone mostly specializing in cult movies, I am required by law to look down on the efforts of people like Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino mining everyone's favourite cult movies for fun, art and profit, and to mumble some stuff about "stealing" from "my genre" that has nothing whatsoever to do with my understanding of the way cultural products feed on other cultural products or - more specifically - the way classic exploitation movies themselves have been built from other people's ideas and the lust for money (which of course doesn't say anything about their qualities as art or entertainment).

Fortunately, I don't care about that law, and have enjoyed nearly anything Rodriguez (or Tarantino) has ever made. Machete is no exception to that rule. As in Favreau's movie, there's a lot of wallowing in silliness on screen here too, but also a whole bunch of silly/cool pretend violence, a bit of sledgehammer political satire, Steven Seagal actually moving and speaking his own lines (though he does both with the expected problems), mainstream Hollywood actresses not daring to undress, and Danny Trejo doing what Danny Trejo does best. It's all in good fun; most of the time, Machete is a lot of fun.

Spirited Killer 3 (or whatever it is actually called, though this might actually be the spiritual sequel to what usually goes under the name of Spirited Killer 2; 199x): Two groups of people (one Japanese, the other Chinese) are tromping through a well-known patch of Thai jungle in search of a black crane's egg. Alas, an evil shaman played by Panna Rittikrai (who else?), has called dibs on the egg and sets his undead servants (including two ninjas who just love to shout "Nin-nin-nin-nin-ja!") on them. Only when the Japanese, the Chinese and the Thai people of a nearby village unite and team-up with a girl with demonic blood (don't ask) can they hinder the bad guy from using the egg for world domination.

Unfortunately, what sounds like a perfectly awesome piece of weird fu cinema gets dragged down into that very particular brand of Thai slapstick humour that makes me want to bash my own head in when I have to witness it. Not even the ninja or a gut-munching old woman are enough to alleviate the pain of dozens of sped-up chase scenes and pratfalling. Of course, not everyone is as allergic to this sort of thing as I am, so you (yes, YOU!) might well like it.

 

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Spirited Killer 2 - Awakened Zombie Battles (199x)

Original title: I'd love to know

Despite the title, this film was probably made before the film that is known as Spirited Killer in Western markets, and does also - as far as I understand - not actually belong to the series of films of which Spirited Killer was the fourth part.

Anyway, here's what this one's about: three groups of people have independently and at the same time arrived in the same patch of jungle. One is a group of Chinese guys and girls and a mediocre Buddhist priest looking for the grave of one of the girls' grandfather (most characters here don't have any names, so who knows what the girl's is) to repatriate him and bring him into the fold in the family tomb back in China. The second group in the area is a merry band of Thai graverobbers, on their way to rob exactly the grave the Chinese are looking for. The third is a magically minded gang using the secluded location to ritually burn their dead leader and transplant his spirit into his successor.

Trouble arises when the mediocre priest starts his own ritual to find the body of gramps at the same time the graverobbers are bleeding on the corpse of Gramps and the spirit transfer is taking place. That's the sort of thing that really messes up everyone's mojo. So thanks to the magical accident Gramps awakens as a hopping vampire and the gang leader becomes one of those Thai martial arts zombie vampire dudes. Both turn out to be rather grumpy.

Obviously, only a Chinese/Thai team-up can win the day.

For once, I can't really blame the licensor (in this case Mill Creek continuing the bad policies of BCI) too much for trying to sell a film as part of a series it doesn't belong to. After all, Awakened Zombie Battles - like Spirited Killer - is another among the astonishing number of films featuring Panna Rittikrai and his stunt team, a patch of jungle that looks somewhat familiar to me by now, martial arts-mad undead of various forms and sorts, and frightening heaps of peculiar humour (that will also look somewhat familiar if you have seen a few Thai budget movies from this era). I can blame Mill Creek for their bizarre assertion (repeated on the packaging of the films more than once) that the language spoken in Thailand is called "Taiwanese", though.

But I digress. So, if you have seen any other film of this type (is there a decent name for this sub-genre?), you'll probably know exactly what to expect from this one, and it will certainly not disappoint you.

As it is with every other movie in the Thai jungle zombie fu genre,  AWZ is a somewhat fun movie if you don't set your expectations to high. The humour is incredibly low-brow, but does at times manage to be funny by the simple virtue of the film visibly not caring where good taste allows the application of humour to a given situation and where not and just applying it whenever it seems to get bored by playing it straight, which happens quite frequently. So the film delivers bizarre details like the fantastic equipment kit of an evil magician complete with pocket calculator and a fire extinguisher whenever it gets tired of showing scenes of people fighting or praying against each other. The mock wrestling match where I expected an earnestly dramatic fight was especially funny. At times, the film feels like a more low-rent version of an early Jackie Chan movie, just with an even greater tendency to drift off in all imaginable directions, and Panna Rittikrai fighting with cigarettes.

Apart from the humour, you get not much acting and a lot of fighting that is actually better - because it's more creative - in the humorous fight scenes than in the more dramatic ones, and a wee little plot that only ever really gets moving in the film's last third.

It's what I call perfectly fine entertainment.

 

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Three Films Make A Post: In Bloody Panic Color

Hard Gun (1996): This story of a one-upmanship competition in vengeance between a cop and a gangster seems to me to be quite typical of that era of Thai cinema , at least as far as I understand it, and not only because Panna Rittikrai action directs and Tony Jaa has one of his early minor roles.

The film features some cheap yet fine action and does the mandatory clichéd melodrama well, yet permanently undermines its own strengths by an incessant barrage of comic relief of the most painful sort that never seems to know when to stop (which would preferably be before it even begins). How much enjoyment one will get from the movie will certainly depend on one's ability to just ignore those parts of the film. I found them terribly difficult to sit through.

 

Guys in Ghost Hand (1991): No, I don't have the faintest idea what the title is supposed to mean.

This Taiwanese (or HK?, things are a bit unclear) fantasy horror ghost movie thing about the ghost of a raped and later beheaded woman taking vengeance on the descendents of her tormentors starts out very weak, with seemingly hours and hours of uninvolving dialogue scenes between characters without any character and pointless guest roles by people like Wu Ma and Alex Fong. Whenever the silly supernatural menace strikes, or Kara Hui and Ku Feng appear as the squabbling pair of Taoists who are our heroes of the evening, the film becomes instantly entertaining, only to fall back into drabness soon enough.

After about an hour of this, the plot suddenly becomes jumpy like a frightened kitten. Of course, nothing in the film's last half hour makes much sense, but at least everything is very colourful and completely bonkers, which is what I want from a film like this.

 

Clash of the Titans (2010): I could live with the fact that director Louis Leterrrier's film doesn't manage to capture the (often naive) charm of the film he is supposedly remaking and turns it into something that seems to be more based on the God of War videogames than the original.

I can't live with the fact that said videogames are a lot less dumb and a lot more fun than this movie is, or with the fact that Leterrier just has no talent at all for making action scenes exciting or visceral. No film with rideable scorpions has any right to feel this drab.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,thai movies,taiwanese movies,hong kong movies,fantasy,action,panna rittikrai,tony jaa,kara hui,ku feng

In short: Battle Warrior (1996)

aka Mission Hunter 2

A Thai archeologist/explorer has crossed the border to (what I suppose is) Laos to find an ancient artifact known as the Golden Stone hidden away somewhere in the jungle. He is captured by the local warlord General Jang who is biding his time smuggling heroin and doing various other dastardly deeds until he has gathered enough funds to establish a reign of terror in the whole of South-East Asia.

Jang would really like to know where the Golden Stone is hidden, but even after a year of torture, the scientist isn't telling, causing much blustering and evil laughter in the hairless general, a man obviously compensating for his hair loss by being very evil indeed.

But a photo of her father's plight and knowledge of his location have found its way into the hands of the explorer's daughter Vicky. She hires the friendly mercenary Captain Pratuang (possibly played by Chatchai Ruksilp) and his men to attack Jang's base and get her father back. Also part of the rescue mission will be a British journalist named Smith who wants to save one of his colleagues from Jang. Like all British journalists, he is a hulking colossus of a bodybuilder with an awesome moustache and much love for snarling while shooting automatic weapons. Add to this the group's native guide and awesome martial artist Arsu (Internet, please tell me what this actor's name is) and you have quite a merry little band.

Everyone's expertise will be needed, too, because before our heroes can even get to their actual enemy they will have to cope with the unfriendly tribe of the Black Goblins (obviously, people without much clothes wearing badly applied blackface and "tribal" make-up) and Jang's secret weapon - the Forest Immortals.

We'll only get to see one member of the latter group, but since this member is Panna Rittikrai repeating his Spirited Warrior martial arts zombie bit, that shouldn't be a problem.

Mission Hunter 2 is marketed in the West like your typical piece of Jaasploitation, which means that it is presented here as a film starring Tony Jaa, although it was produced before the actor's sudden (and deserved) fame and so Jaa is in fact only playing henchman number one in it. If you can get over this and don't expect Ong Bak 0, you get a typical jungle action flick containing all the usual ingredients, from the racially offensive tribe to people jumping away from exploding huts.

There's no dramatic need for much of anything that happens in the movie, its pacing is in fact rather slow. It would probably be more coherent without the silly-but-fun zombie bit, yet it is a perfectly watchable example of its type.

If you go into it looking for a basic and cheap piece of jungle action, you will probably have your fun, at least with its little bonus features like the very obviously stolen and highly melodramatic (often for no good reason) musical score, the very tasteless scene where Jang threatens the explorer with the mass rape of his daughter while his men are already lining up for it in single file (the difference to comparable movies from Hong Kong or Italy would be that no rape is happening after the explorer caves in) and some rather good jumping and fighting by the guy who plays Arsu.

I certainly did have a good time with it.

 

Technorati-Tags: thai movies,in short,action,adventure,tony jaa,panna rittikrai

Son of Three Films Make A Post

Ong bak 2 (2008): Despite a troubled production history and a certain stubborn resistance of the film against involving its viewers emotionally, Tony Jaa's & Panna Rittikrai's nominal sequel to the film that brought Thai martial arts cinema into the view of a Western mainstream audience delivers an infectious flow of truly awesome action sequences. People fearful of abrupt, open endings which ask the viewer to pray for a film's protagonist should probably beware, though. But if you like your martial arts films as physical experiences, this is not to be missed.

 

Rider of Revenge (1971): Quite a few people - among them house favorite Polly (Shan) Kuan as morally upright swordswoman and always dependable Tien Peng - are after the rather fearful murderer Ting after he has been broken out of jail. Some of them want his hidden loot to pay for their hundreds of henchmen, some of them to finance disaster relief (no, really), while Polly of course only seeks justice and Tien Peng is on a ma-related mission Bollywood would approve of. While all of this probably won't rock your world, fine acting and solid fighting still make for an entertaining Taiwanese wuxia.

 

Zinda Laash (1967): A Pakistani version of Horror of Dracula, with some striking black and white photography that reminds me of expressionist silent movies. Interestingly, the film is set in contemporary Pakistan, quite unlike most of its Western brethren's fixation on the Victorian era. It even culminates in a car chase. Only the needle-dropped soundtrack lets the film down sometimes: a jazz version of "La Cucaracha" does not for an ominous mood make. The musical numbers are fine, though.

 

Technorati-Tags: taiwanese movies,thai movies,pakistani movies,horror,martial arts,wuxia,polly kuan,tien peng,tony jaa,panna rittikrai,in short