Bangkok Dangerous

By Clint Morris

Nicolas Cage’s career choices of late have resembled his hair – weird, and not exactly nice to look at.

Thankfully his latest effort is a little more tolerable than say, ”Ghost Rider” or ”National Treasure 2” – but it’d also have been better if it hadn’t had featured Cage at all.

You know exactly what I mean. Cage doesn’t seem to be able to act anymore. He’s done one too many popcorn movies that have required him to deliver his lines to a snazzy camera – and that’s about it – and has been spoilt from the experience. In the process, he’s forgotten how to perform – which is a shame, because he’s been very good in quite a few films (“Raising Arizona”, “Moonstruck”, “Leaving Las Vegas” and so on) – but more so, play anyone other than ‘Nicolas Cage with crazy Hair Plugs’.

I suppose once you start working for Jerry Bruckheimer – and get paid nicely for doing so – it’s hard to go back and work for say, someone like a Scorsese or Coppola. And it’s just a pity Cage did so many Bruckheimer-produced action films in the 90s, because he’s seemingly gotten used to the lazy style of filmmaking. You can’t blame him. Those films made him an even bigger star than what he was. But at the same time, making those films is a bit like drinking – the more you partake in, the less smarter you get. And unfortunately, Cage seems to be running low on brain cells now.

Cage’s latest popcorn picture is probably one of his better ones in recent years – not that that’s saying much. A rip-off of the Ridley Scott/Michael Douglas thriller “Black Rain” – the one where – “Bangkok Dangerous” stars Cage as a mysterious assassin (I don’t believe we even hear his name) who floats around the taking out whoever he’s been paid to. His latest assignment – in fact, he’s there to kill four people – takes him to Thailand.

As usual, the hit man finds a street kid – in this case a hustler named Kong – to help him. After Kong has a close call and learns who he is, he asks him to train him and he does. Kong becomes somewhat of a sidekick to our hero’s endeavors – right up until the moment he’s snatched by those who’ve discovered the hit man’s identity.

There’s a good film in here somewhere – in fact, the first hour or so was quite promising. Sometime after that, the idea was lost, and the filmmakers – The Pang Brothers – just decided to pad the rest of the film with an irritatingly long gun-fight that seemed to last about 20 mins or more. It near undid all their good work in the first half of the film – including setting up a plausible love interest (a young deaf woman who works at a chemist) and also exploring the ‘man with no name’s’ relationship with his new student (who, on any other time, he’d remain disattached). What starts out as intriguing ends up tedious…. And boring!

I doubt audiences would care so much that the film is riddled with clichés – and it is – if only it’s tone had remained constant til the end and the script had seen through what it sets up.