Bang Rajan (2000)

Director: Tanit Jitnukul
Starring: Jaran Ngamdee, Winai Kraibutr, Theerayut Pratyabamrung

The story of the village of Bang Rajan is one of the most famous in Thai history, and while it's easy to say the film Bang Rajan was inspired by films like Seven Samurai, it's also easy to guess that Seven Samurai might have found some kernel of inspiration in the true story of Bang Rajan. It was a tiny rural village which, despite being grossly outmatched by Burmese forces possessed of far superior technology, numbers, and training, managed to hold out against onslaught after onslaught, costing the Burmese dearly, not to mention delivering a major blow to Burmese morale before the town finally fell. Bang Rajan the movie takes this story and treats it with an epic feel. There's very little truly original in the film, and every hoary old chestnut of this type of war movie is served up. What makes Bang Rajan fun, however, is how gung-ho it is with its elements. This is formulaic film making but in a way that is like receiving something you really want from your wish list.

Bang Rajan has everything you'd expect in a movie where sassy villagers repel superior forces: the cool and calculating leader, the young hot shot, the drunken lout who will rise Toshiro Mifune style to the heights of glory and honor in battle -- nothing you haven't seen dozens of times before. But that familiarity didn't much matter to me, because Bang Rajan is full of energy and zest, not to mention solid acting, incredible cinematography, and some truly monumental mustaches. The battles are gory, informed obviously by Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan (those two films cast long shadows still), but very effective, and for much of their running time, the director Tanit Jitnukul (who helmed the similar historical battle epics Khunsuk and Khun Pan: Legend of the Warlord) manages to refrain from employing "in the thick of it" shaky cam, allowing us to sit back and enjoy all the shouting, leaping, and general carnage.

The leading cast of men continue the modern Thai tradition of loading their films with hot guys who can actually act. Jaran Ngamdee sports a mustache that would make Rollie Fingers fall down and weep at his feet. I guess it was a fake, but the fact that Thai men ever sported mustaches this fabulous is just one example of the undying flame that enabled them to defy the Burmese army for nearly half a year. Like the other characters, he is exactly what you expect of his character, but all of them are likable. Not every film is character driven after all, and it's perfectly acceptable to present us a stock we instantly recognize, allowing us to get on with the rest of the film. As the drunken, axe-wielding Nai Thongmen, Bin Bunluerit became the crowd favorite (as is always the case with the drunken lout who rises to greatness) and took home a best acting award for that year. He proves that the Toshiro Mifune model can still be fun, exciting, and poignant even if you already know what to expect.

The fact that the film invests time in developing characters and familiarizing you with them, even within he confines of their cliches, makes the finale clash, when you know pretty much everyone has to die, all the more moving. And the scene of Jaran Ngamdee slashing his way across a lush green field littered with corpses, his majestic mustache flowing around him -- man, it's straight out of "dramatic war cinema 101," but it's still extremely effective.

I wouldn't exactly call Bang Rajan a solid historical lesson, but history and folk tales underline everything that goes into the story -- and in fact, that it is so similar to Seven Samurai and countless other war and siege films is a testament to how certain folk tales permeate all cultures, and certain traits and scenarios affect populations across varied cultures and geographies.

My only real gripe about Bang Rajan are a few ill-advised forays into CGI explosions. Placed as they are amid actual actors and sword fighting and stampeding elephants, these clumsily-executed computer effects stick out like a sore thumb. But there are only a couple of them, and that's easy to overlook in the greater scheme of thing. Bang Rajan ends up being one of my favorite things: well-executed, energetic genre formula. You know what you're going to get, but that doesn't mean it doesn't still taste delicious.

Cobra Thunderbolt (1984)

I can still remember the day I got my driver’s license.  It was a sunny, snowy Saturday morning in late 1989.  I had been taking lessons from a local driving school (I’ll leave names out of it so as to spare anybody excessive emotional pain).  These lessons generally consisted of me being picked up by the instructor at my house.  I would then putter around town for about an hour and be dropped back off.  Anyone who knows me at all knows I’m of a rather nervous disposition at the best of times.  Now imagine that sort of personality in the driver’s seat of a car with an equally anxious fellow in the instructor’s seat.  If you remember what Keith Coogan’s character had to go through in 1987’s Hiding Out, this was like that but less jovial.  At any rate, after whatever number of mandated outings with the instructor, we mutually decided it was time to end our relationship by getting me the hell out of his lack of hair.  Since we had a snow storm the day before my exam, I had to drive an extra twenty minutes to the only place that was open for road tests that day, thus forcing us to spend that much more time in each other’s company.  After earning that prized sliver of laminated card stock, my instructor and I headed back to my house.  As I was being released from my bondage, he made sure to register his lack of faith in my then-current level of skill behind the wheel and suggested that I should drive with an experienced motorist for a few more months.  I thanked him for his time, proceeded to ignore his sage advice, and have regretted none of it to this day.  I can’t honestly say I’m the world’s greatest driver, but sometimes good is good enough.  Like this week’s film.

Weapons manufacturer Kang Wan and his mercenary army are gearing up for war from their ultra-high-tech headquarters.  But in order to dominate the world, he absolutely must have the plans to Colonel Dave’s (Krung Srivilai) brand-spanking new battle truck, the ultra-high-tech Cobra Thunderbolt.  Needless to say, Dave doesn’t feel like complying, which forces Kang Wan to resort to more nefarious methods of persuasion.  Dick (Sorapong Chatri), a former soldier under Dave’s command while stationed in Laos, and Dave’s own daughter, Lieutenant Molly, pitch in their own unique skills to bring justice to the power-mad wannabe warlord.

Airwolf, Blue Thunder, the Landmaster from Damnation Alley (this is only a partial list, admittedly), are all part of a lineage of super vehicles that became wildly popular starting in the late Seventies.  Yes, there were vehicles that exuded personality before then: the 1966 Batmobile, Star Trek’s Enterprise, and the Seaview from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, just to name a few.  The thing that separates those earlier vehicles from something like the Thunderbolt in my mind is in the relationship between the machines and the people who pilot them.  Going into the Eighties, these vehicles became far more utilitarian in purpose.  They were still tricked out like crazy, but they tended to be rooted in some form of reality.  Their pilots were forthright and steadfast in their resolve.  They were very much men with a mission.  There were exceptions like Knight Rider, but even with that one, there is a sense that Michael Knight and KITT work best together, and that is their strength.  Batman can vanquish the Joker without his car.  Michael cannot take down Goliath without KITT.  

Concepts like Cobra Thunderbolt are high tech weapons.  Conversely, their operators need to be old school warriors, because it’s the synthesis formed between the two which creates an optimal efficiency between them.  Like a sniper and his favorite rifle, certain people work better with certain machines than with others.  Dick and Molly understand Dave’s technology, so they’re the best equipped to operate it.  The idea is that putting any old person behind the wheel wouldn’t produce the same results.  There is a (God help me for using this word) synergy that is generated, and even if the personality of the driver is rather blandly drawn (as they most assuredly are here), the effect the two have on screen as a unit is evident.  You could likewise argue that part of why the new tech/old soldier dynamic works so well is due to the stoicism of the human element.  The repression of emotions in service of a goal encourages a smooth interface between human and machine.  This is not to say pilots lack emotion.  They simply exercise greater discipline in controlling and compartmentalizing them than the average person, and some part of a viewer’s mind admires this.

Cards on the table, I am very inexperienced in the world of Thai films, and I have to say I’m fairly comfortable with that.  From what I have seen up to this point, the product can be a real crap shoot.  Thus, I’m okay with letting others traverse the mine field of highs and lows in Thai cinema and then cherry picking what I watch from their reports.  In saying that, I’m also ignorant as to the breadth of strong female roles in Thai films.  Yet, we get two in Tanong Srichua’s (one and only, according to IMDb) film.  Molly is a soldier through and through.  She drives the Cobra Thunderbolt for her father’s tests, and she doesn’t show much in the way of inner weakness.  Her mother (whom I never caught a name for, and while I’m at it, you may have noticed a lack of attribution between actors and characters; Despite my best efforts, these kinds of things tend to be nebulous at best to research on the internet; Yet another reason I’m happy to let others trudge through the murk of Asian film credits) is skilled as a Thai boxer, a samurai swordswoman, and other martial arts.  To her, these skills are more important for a woman than learning to put on makeup.  Between this attitude and the lack of rape-y situations in the film, I found this to be quite refreshing, especially since genre films from this nape of the woods can tend to be rather misogynistic.  Naturally, Molly looks up to her mother because of her strength, and we get the impression she would like to live up to this model.  Nonetheless, unlike her mother, who does maintain a nice sense of balance between femininity and masculinity (though she really doesn’t have tons of screen time), Molly is almost sexless.  She could as easily have been played by a man, and in some sense this could be viewed as a leveling of the field.  Not that the story really gives a shit one way or the other.  The film consists of the sort of coincidental writing which can be seen in a vast array of Asian films of this ilk.  I’ll give you an example.  While Dick is eluding some pursuers, he is picked up by a woman in a car.  Mere seconds later, he spots Dave’s van on the other side of the road (Dave had no idea that Dick would be in this area, or if so, we are never informed of this) and hooks up with his old commanding officer.  The film is littered with incidents like this, but, even if you’ve only seen a few Asian films from this era, it’s not unexpected.  In fact, it’s probably more than half the charm.

MVT:  The Cobra Thunderbolt is a low grade hodgepodge affair of a vehicle (and film), but it is just distinctive enough that it does what it needs to do: it captures the eye and keeps the viewer watching to see what it will accomplish.

Make or Break:  Without spoiling things, there is a major turn around the midpoint of the film.  What occurs at this moment is not terribly surprising (in the sense of genre expectations).  How this moment plays out, however, is not only out of the blue, but also jaw-droppingly over the top, and it actually made me sit up in my chair.  Well played.

Score:  6.75/10 

Clash (2009)

Starring:Veronica Ngo, Johnny Nguyen

Directed by: Le Tranh Son

In this kung fu caper, a prostitute turned assassin codenamed Phoenix (Veronica Ngo) must pull one final job to secure her freedom from powerful crimelord Black Dragon. Her mission is to steal a highly valuable laptop containing defense codes that control VINSTAT-1, Vietnam's satellite system. To ensure cooperation, Black Dragon incentivises Phoenix further by leveraging her daughter's life against the success of this heist.

With her daughter's life at stake, Phoenix assembles a squad of ex-cons to help her -- and by assemble, I mean they all suddenly show up out of nowhere -- and bestows them all with aliases such as Hawk, Tiger, Snake and Ox. She coldly lays out the ground rules, namely demanding no questions about their job. This scene is clearly derivative of Reservoir Dogs insofar as it involves a group of criminals meeting at a remote location, receiving codenames and, like Mr. Pink, one team member takes issue with his embarrassing codename.

After locating the sought-after laptop with some dangerous Frenchmen, whose bald heads and ripped musculature makes them look like a contingent of Georges St. Pierre impersonators, Phoenix's crew hatch their intricate plan; they march straight into a hotel and tear their way through St. Pierre wannabes with guns blazing and punch-kicking ferocity. Despite such a meticulous plan, the laptop manages to slip through Phoenix's hands and into Snake's grasp, who turns on the group and boosts the laptop to presumably sell it off to the highest bidder. I guess Phoenix was completely blindsided that the guy she named Snake wasn't trustworthy.

As the laptop search continues, a romance develops between Phoenix and Tiger to help her cope with the heartache and pad the running time between fight scenes. We're given the whole melodramatic love story shebang; Vaseline-soaked lenses, sorrowful color-tinged filter flashbacks and a sex scene set to some distractingly poppy groove music. Then we discover that Tiger isn't a genuine criminal, but rather an undercover agent trying to takedown Black Dragon and prevent those satellite codes from falling into the wrong hands. I can't lay the blame on Phoenix's doorstep for not seeing this one; a codename like Tiger carries no connotation toward someone working undercover (although, I believe Tiger's original moniker was Chameleon in a roughcut version of the film). Now, if Tiger had chewed an effeminate magician's face half off to her surprise, I'd have to start looking at resumes on Monster.com for thieves with laptop pilfering expertise and skills with assigning codenames without bad omens.

Thereafter, Phoenix and Tiger continue to mow down henchmen and chase Snake as he attempts to peddle the laptop. Their pursuit leads them back to Black Dragon as they square off against Snake, more cronies and Black Dragon in hopes of safeguarding VINSTAT-1 and saving Phoenix's daughter.

Clash (Bay Rong) is most entertaining when allowing Veronica Ngo's Phoenix to be a fiercely scowling hard-edged high kick girl. It's refreshing to witness a strong female presence, exerting her dominance over ex-con male counterparts, threateningly commanding them both with words and fists. She's apt to smack them around as evidenced when Ox gets beaten into begging for mercy after suggesting a new codename for Phoenix, Horny. I love one moment in an early fight scene where the action pauses and a random thug shatters a bottle over Phoenix's head to which she no sells completely, not feigning even the slightest reaction or flinch. This type of imperviousness is often relegated to male action stars so it's great to see the female lead given such a moment. Ngo sells herself well as a believable action star and impressively holds her own in comparison to co-star Johnny Nguyen, who brings a hefty martial arts rep to the table from The Rebel and stuntwork on various big budget Hollywood productions.

It's no surprise that Clash loses steam as Phoenix's steeliness softens and the character falls captive to horribly designed and overly predictable story trappings. Phoenix loses the majority of her crew early on, leaving no one to command other than Tiger, who is elevated from bossed-around thug to the love of Phoenix's life. Not only is the romantic slant badly drawn and cheesily conceived, it thrusts Phoenix into a paint-by-numbers subservient woman-in-action role, albeit one that throws some nice kicks, that must be redeemed by a superior male that comes to her rescue in the end. It's hard to keep interest from waning because the two leads exhibit scant magnetism. It's also odd that Ngo and Nguyen have little chemistry since they are or were apparently an off-screen item. Admittedly, martial arts films are a little bit of a cinematic blindspot for me, but I understand that diehard fanatics of this genre primarily measure these films by the action on display and care far less about the bland narrative threads.

Clash has many well-constructed fight scenes filled with aerial takedowns and high-flying strikes amidst continuous henchmen droves. This is a credit to first time director Le Tranh Son's craftsmanship that all the fighting appears to be practical without wirework or any CG enhancements. The camera captures the action without flash, supporting a grittier feel over sensationalism. There's also a uniqueness in the fight choreography through an abundance of submission maneuvers utilized, ranging from neck cranks, leglocks and armbreakers. The downside here is that the combat may be too choreographed, working against the naturalistic exchanges and making the grappling more closely aligned with a MMA bout due to the quick array of submission reversals and escapes. If there's one prime criticism, it's that all the fight scenes are crafted in a similar fashion; there's very little differentiating the fights, leaving each one without any definitive identity of its own. The fight scenes try to keep the film afloat, but the script is like a pair of cement shoes sinking the entire picture.

Make or Break scene - The Reservoir Dogs-inspired assembling the crew scene makes the film. If not for this scene, it would be hard to stick with Clash after the sheer fun factor dips off so severely. For her part, Ngo's at her best here, exuding an icy glare and forceful command of the crew gathered. It's a lot of fun as well when Mr. Pink deja vu kicks in when the roly poly Ox complains about his codename then receives a stern face-bashing from Phoenix for doing so.

MVT - Quite easily, the fight scenes. While they never approach greatness, they are firmly in the very good category despite the aforementioned flaws. In short, the fight scenes are the glue holding together this anemically plotted film. There's just enough action bursts to keep you from nodding off or ejecting the disc. At least, in part, the fights were enough to drive this film to the #1 position in Vietnam for the 2009 box office.

Score - 6.25/10