Tweet
Released by: Magnolia Films
Released on: May 21, 2013.
Director: Petchtai Wongkamlao
Cast: Yanin Vismistananda, Petchtai Wongkamlao
Year: 2011
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
Thai martial arts phenom Yanin 'Jeejee' Vismistananda headlines this 2011 movie from director Petchtai Wongkamlao. Here she plays a young woman named Jukkalan, an orphan who lives with her Uncle Wang (Petchtai Wongkamlao). He runs a video store and she works as a bike messenger. She's a tough, smart mouthed kid, and she delivers packages of a rather unorthodox kind - drugs. She's employed by two competing gangsters - Boss Seng and Boss Piak (Anek Intajan) - but she's been dipping into her shipments and taking a little bit of the money and the blow that she's been carrying around as part of her drug mule exploits for herself.
As we all know, drug kingpins don't like being stolen from, so it shouldn't surprise anyone when Seng and Piak send out their top men to take Jukkalan out of the picture and retrieve what was stolen from them. Jukkalan, however, more or less mops the floor with anyone who comes near her proving, in the movie's stand out scene, that a bike isn't just a mode of transportation but in the right hands it can also be a deadly weapon. Fighting and bad comic relief ensues en masse.
After her fantastic turn in Chocolate, Vismistananda's work here is a bit of a disappointment not because she can't handle herself in the fight scenes but because she and the rest of the cast are bagged down with some fairly horrible comic relief. There are some solid fight scenes here, the scene that takes place in the bike ship rivaling anything else she's done so far in her career, so as an action movie this one is okay… but the pacing is so erratic and uneven and the comedy so over the top and corny that it definitely takes you out of the movie. That bike shop scene though… hot damn. Spokes and gears go flying everywhere as she becomes a whirling dervish of mayhem taking on all comers. It's impressive and completely saves the movie.
Also fun are the villains. Everyone on the 'bad guy' side of the spectrum in this movie is so ridiculously colorful and crazy and goofy that, okay, this part of the comic relief in the movie actually works. The villains in the movie are like poorly written comic book villains, all style and no substance, but they add a certain appreciable kookiness to the movie. The film isn't paced very well, however, and this hurts things. It's all kind of mindless and silly and not particularly well thought out. It's entertaining enough on a superficial level and not without moments of entertainment, but far from a classic.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The AVC encoded 1080p 1.78.1 widescreen transfer has nice color reproduction and decent black levels and it looks pretty good despite occasional interference from some rather odd mosquito noise in certain scenes. Skin tones look lifelike and realistic and while some minor compression artifacts can be spotted here and there, there aren't any problems with edge enhancement to report on. This was shot on digital video so there are no print damage issues but the whole thing feels a little cold. While not reference quality, this transfer is at least clean and stable and offers better detail and definition than DVD could.
Audio options are provided in English and Thai in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound with optional subtitles provided in English, English SDH and Spanish. 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. Levels are well balanced and there are no problems with hiss or distortion to complain about. Dialogue is clean and clear and directional effects are handled nicely, helping to fill in the various martial arts set pieces nicely.
The main extra is a seven minute featurette that takes a look at the making of the movie by way of some cast and crew interviews and a few snippets of footage shot on set during the production. Aside from that we get a two minute behind the scenes clip, a trailer for the feature, trailers for a few unrelated Magnolia titles, menus and chapter selection.
The Final Word:
There's a decent action movie hiding in here somewhere and Yanin Vismistananda still makes for a mesmerizing lead, but the weird comedy forced into the storyline hurts this one more than you'll want it to. Worth seeing, but not a classic. Magnolai's Blu-ray looks okay and sounds quite good, though the extras are slim. If you're really into Thai martial arts movies you'll get more out of this than the average viewer, but there are better entries out there than this one.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
