Tweet
Released by: Well Go USA
Released on: March 26, 2013.
Director: Jean-Marc Mineo
Cast: John Foo, Caroline Ducey
Year: 2011
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
Jean-Marc Mineo's 2011 film, Bangkok Revenge, starts with a scene in which some armed gunmen come into a couple's room and shoot them dead in their bed. The gunmen then realize that their young son has seen them, and when the kid pulls off one of the assailant's masks, he gets a bullet in the head. Amazingly enough, this bullet doesn't kill him. The kid is raised by one of the nurse's at the hospital he was taken to and when he's old enough, this young man named Manit (John Foo) learns the martial arts. Though the bullet obviously didn't kill him, it did do something to him upstairs - he feels no emotion.
Now a deadly fighting machine, he sets out to find out what happened to his parents. As it turns out his dad was a cop fighting corruption stemming from within the Bangkok police department. As he starts digging around he meets a reporter named Clara (Caroline Ducey) who is investigating gang violence in the area. Although he feels no emotion, when Clara asks him if he can make love to a woman, he wastes no time hopping on top and pumping away, but shortly after their encounter she's kidnapped by a gang of transsexuals with ties to the corrupt cops. Manit, with no one else to turn to, has to head into the streets of Bangkok to save the women he doesn't actually really love at all, and maybe…. just maybe… avenge his parents' death.
Action movies don't come a whole lot goofier and more disjointed than this one, but in the interests of full disclosure, that didn't take away from the film's bizarre entertainment value. The first part of the movie starts off like a fairly typical revenge story but by the time we get to the weird humpy-pumpy love scene and the gang of lady boys, things have definitely veered left of center and taken a quick turn into some decidedly strange territory. A lot of the film's nonsensical feel comes from the fact that, for much of the movie at least, dialogue is spoken in English by cast members who obviously don't speak English all that well. British born Foo is an exception, he's completely easy to understand but everyone else? You'll be thankful that there are subtitles because so many words are mispronounced and so much of the dialogue is completely random (yes, she really did just blurt out 'NOBODY TALKS TO THE FANKY!') that without the subs you'd spend a lot of time rewinding trying to figure out just what the Hell is going on here.
As far as the action scenes go, well, they're a mixed bag. The fact of the matter is that they're edited far too quickly and that takes away from the flow of the martial arts sequences. Where it takes from the grace of the form, however, it does offer in its place some fairly hard hitting scenes highlighted by a quick bit where Foo takes on two guys in a small elevator. The fights are a bit choppy and shot close in style, but despite this, most of the time they work quite well. Ultimately, this is just a really strange film, a hodgepodge of cultures and styles and storyline that don't always taste great when mixed together, but which are at least interesting enough to make for something different.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The AVC encoded 1080p high definition 1.85.1 widescreen transfer has nice color reproduction and decent black levels and it looks pretty good though be forewarned that there is some serious color tinkering going on in certain scenes (intentional on the part of the filmmakers and not a flaw with the transfer). The movie also tends to lean towards the soft side of things, so detail doesn't always blow you away like you might hope it would. Skin tones look lifelike and realistic but some minor noise creeps a few scenes, particularly those that take place in lower lighting. This isn't a reference quality presentation but it's good.
The Thai language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track with optional subtitles provided in English is a pretty solid one - though note that for this track, much of the dialogue is actually spoken in English, it's by actors whose native language is not English, so the subs still come in handy. You have the option of having the subs translate only the Thai dialogue or the Thai and English dialogue. This mix delivers pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a movie of this type - surrounds are used well in the action scenes and your subwoofer will punctuate the hits quite effectively, though sometimes the bass is cranked up too high and tends to bury bits and pieces of the dialogue. An optional Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track is also included.
Extras on this disc are limited to a trailer for the feature, menus and chapter stops, and a few promo spots for other unrelated Well Go USA properties that play before the main menu screen loads.
The Final Word:
Bangkok Revenge isn't a movie that's really too easy to take seriously - it jumps around a lot, it shows little regard for logic, and at times, it's just plain weird. Having said that, it's also a fair bit of fun so long as you go in with your expectations in check and don't mind the hyper edited fight scenes and Well Go USA's Blu-ray, if devoid of extras, looks and sounds pretty good.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
