Review: Bangkok Revenge

A Bangkok cop and his family are targeted by masked killers (really corrupt cops). They kill the parents, but one of the gang fails to properly finish off the young son, who is taken to hospital. He was shot alright, but the bullet to the head somehow didn’t kill him. I believe the doctors have diagnosed him as Hard to Kill. When a pretty nurse (Aphiradi Phawaphutanon) doesn’t like the look of some of the visitors outside the boy’s room, she takes matters into her own hands, whisking the boy away to a small village to be raised by her and her martial arts master friend (Kowitch Wathana). From very early on it appears that the young boy has lost all capacity for empathy, but Wathana teaches him to fight, and he seems to take well to that. When the boy (named Manit) grows into a man, a now elderly and dying Phawaphutanon fills Manit (Jon Foo) in on the circumstances of his parents’ deaths and gives him all the information she has gathered through the years about the crime. Now it’s time for Manit to exact his revenge. Along the way he is aided by a couple of French people, reporter Clara (Caroline Ducey) and kickboxer Simon (Michaël Cohen), the former of whom is investigating local corruption and gangs.

 

If viewed outside of its chosen martial arts genre, this French-Thai co-production from writer-director Jean-Marc Minéo (his first feature-length film) probably doesn’t stack up brilliantly. But it is a martial arts film, so what kind of crazy person would try and evaluate it on any other terms? For what it is, it’s a pretty good martial arts film and Jon Foo’s lead performance is at least a damn sight better than the monotonous one he delivered in “Tekken” (You may have also seen him pretty much stealing the show in Tony Jaa’s disappointing “The Protector”). He does a pretty acceptable job playing this rather damaged, emotionless character who might remind you of a more palatable “Ichi the Killer”. In fact, when you combine his performance with his ability to speak English fluently (he was born and raised in London and has spent time in the US as well, which explains his semi-English, semi-American accent) and his good looks, I think I may have been wrong to suggest in my review of “Tekken” that he’ll never be much of anything. He’s also one helluva impressive fighter as this film definitely displays several times. It takes a while to get to the goods, though, frustratingly The opening bar brawl is pretty disappointing, it looks like it was lensed through a frigging fish bowl, so you can’t get a handle on what you’re seeing. The second fight is almost as bad, done entirely in shadow cast on a brick wall. Are you kidding me? Thankfully, the third fight out in the street is excellent. Foo is incredible, and it doesn’t look to me as though wire-work would even be possible in this scene. Wow. The fourth fight in an elevator is brief, but it’s IN AN ELEVATOR! And 2 on 1 at that. After 20 minutes I was left thinking that Mr. Foo had surely beaten up half the population of Thailand. But given that half of this film’s cast appear to be French, maybe it’s just a quarter. Later on, Foo beats up four guys in a car…from the middle backseat! It’s short, but how in the holiest of fucks did he do that? Short as some of the bursts of action are, they sure are creative. We also get a terrific, brutal fight on a train carriage, even if the inside of the train compartment looks too roomy to be real.

 

Meanwhile, scenes with the kidnapped French journo threaten to take this film into Women in Prison movie territory. Really bizarre stuff, but the film sure as hell ain’t dull. Most of the time, the film will remind you of Steven Seagal, specifically “Hard to Kill”, but with all the moving parts jumbled about so that it’s the kid who gets nursed back to health and comes back for revenge. The similarity, especially in the first act is so obvious that there’s no way Mr. Minéo wasn’t influenced by that classic 1990 action film (with a touch of Van Damme’s “Kickboxer”). And that’s no complaint, either, because that film is almost 25 years old (Shit, did I really just type that?), so who cares? The opening scene is definitely “Hard to Kill”, with the masked assailants come to kill Foo’s parents for the father’s knowledge of something nefarious.

 

If I do have any complaint here, it’s with the absolutely abysmal performance by Caroline Ducey as the journalist. She’s really awful and her accent is at times truly impenetrable. It’s really quite silly that the film is in English when Foo is the only English speaker here who doesn’t appear to be speaking phonetically. Other than that, any complaints are minor, such as the rather repugnant death of a dog used to show the main character has lost all capacity to feel (Was it really necessary? Really? And do they honestly have poodles in Thailand?), and a former French policeman being given the very French last name of Webber. What the hell?

 

If you want a solid martial arts movie, this one pretty much fits the bill. Some of the early fights are duds, but once Foo gets going, boy is he impressive. Just don’t judge this film outside of its chosen genre, it really isn’t fair. This is a good example of the kind of film it’s trying to be. You can’t ask for much more than that.

 

Rating: B-