Screenhead

Ah, remakes.  I love you so.

And when I first saw the trailers for the remake of Bangkok Dangerous, featuring no less than Nicholas Cage as hitman Joe, I confess that I had some serious reservations.

Why?  Because that trailer looked about as dull as a burlap sack full of wet hair, that’s why.  And when I watched the movie, I was pleasantly surprised…but not by very much.

Hitman Joe is the best there is—a fact that a whole lot of other fictional hitmen would LOVE to dispute via all manner of lethal hardware—and he’s on his way to his final job, four kills in Bangkok.  He hires a local pickpocket to serve as his go-between between himself and his bosses, but eventually takes a liking to the pickpocket, training him in the art of killing as his student.  Joe’s first three kills go off with varying levels of resistance, but his fourth kill, the Prime Minister of Thailand, isn’t so easy.  The pickpocket Joe trained has made it abundantly clear to Joe that the Prime Minister really IS one of Thailand’s finest, and Joe’s trust in his pickpocket friend / student is getting in the way.  Now, Joe’s on the run, and his pickpocket friend is now in danger from the syndicate that hired Joe in the first place.

When you compare this one to the original, there is almost no comparison at all—every line that comes out of Nicholas Cage’s mouth is a violation of the original canon.  The original hitman Joe, you see, was deaf and mute.  The comparisons only get worse from there.

Frankly, I was somewhat surprised that the movie itself wasn’t as dull as the trailer looked to be, but then, I wasn’t at ALL surprised to find out that the movie itself was only slightly more exciting than the dull-as-dishwater trailer.  Still, I actually found my mind drifting occasionally during this one, a bad sign for an action movie, and a DEADLY bad sign for a remake of an Asian action movie.

When even fiery explosions aren’t sufficient to keep an audience’s attention, you’ve really got to question the value of this movie at all.  And frankly, after watching Nicholas Cage snarl and growl his way coldly through this whole thing, I’m all the more convinced that he needs to stick to suspense / thrillers where he can see what’s coming.  Because when he’s without his precognitive state he just can’t seem to carry a tune, metaphorically.  Seriouly, watching Cage as a hitman who grew a conscience on his last hit left me as cold as the corpse of Lindsay Lohan’s career.  And while I’m at it, can we PLEASE put that whole theme to bed once and for all?  I’m getting sick of hitmen who go through life snarling and growling and just being cold toward everybody until the last twenty minutes or so when they have this epiphany that, son of a bitch, they’re killing ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS!!

It’s like watching a really unpleasant version of Soylent Green, where Charlton Heston’s running around with a Big Bear .50 caliber rifle with a monster scope, screaming “I’ve been shooting at PEOPLE!  At PEEEEEE—PUHHHLLLL!”

And sadly, that image will be the most fun I got out of Bangkok Dangerous.

So thank you, Pang brothers, for executing a truly craptacular remake and wasting my time by making the whole thing only slightly less boring than one of the worst trailers I’ve ever seen.

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