Movie Review - 'Bangkok Dangerous'

Bangkok Dangerous

Starring Nicolas Cage and Shahkrit Yamnarm
Directed by Danny and Oxide Pang
Rated R

You hear all the time that sex and violence in movies and television has desensitized our society, and dangerously so. We're warned about letting our children play Grand Theft Auto, meanwhile their grandparents sang along as Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Sex and violence is around us all the time and it always has been, intertwined in a way that it probably shouldn't be. Of course, Jack the Ripper never downloaded porn or watched a slasher movie, so what set him off? On the surface, Bangkok Dangerous brings to mind those images of sex and violence, not separate but rushing together. Bangkok, as you probably know, has one of the world's most liberal sex trades - you want it, you got it. Dangerous, at least when the movie poster shows Nicolas Cage pointing a gun, means violence. Strangely enough, though, this movie didn't have enough of either, or at least not enough of one or the other. Cage plays a hitman named Joe, who, as movie hitmen do, moves from city to city killing high profile targets for untold riches. He lives very well, again, as movie hitmen almost always do. He's called to Bangkok to eliminate four targets and Joe considers in the last job. There's a reason crime movies employ the last job device so frequently: It's an instant character arc. If the criminal gets out of that life, he's reformed, and the screenwriter has therefore done the minimum amount required by the story. Joe tells us the rules of being an effective hitman (although you'd think by blabbing about it, he'd be less effective): 1) Don't ask questions 2) Don't get attached 3) Erase all traces 4) Know when to get out. I wonder, if a hitman is in a house on fire, as Cage is at one point in Bangkok Dangerous, does he go through his checklist before stop, drop, and roll, or would that practical advice trump his rules of engagement? You have to admit, seven steps is a lot to remember. Maybe that's why he makes so much money. The problem with Bangkok Dangerous is that it doesn't just want to be a hitman movie, and it doesn't want to trade in just sex and violence. But it's a violent world we're watching that just so happens to be on assignment in the sex capital of the world. That's what we should be seeing, frankly. Instead, directors Danny and Oxide Pang want this remake of their own 1999 film to incorporate the teacher-student storyline and the lovers in a dangerous time storyline. Perhaps this film would've been fine with one of those, but it snaps under the weight of both.