Vengeance of an Assassin

[GeneChing]

[mickey]

Greetings,

When I saw that trailer, I realized just how much Jackie Chan contributed to action movies.


mickey

[Jimbo]

From the trailer, ithis looks (to me) to be the best Thai MA/action movie to come out in a while. I hope it lives up to the trailer. For the past several years, the Thai action movie industry has been languishing.

[Jimbo]

This actually turned out to be an exciting, entertaining film. Being stunt master/choreographer Panna Rittikrai's final film before his death last year, it features some of the best stunts and action sequences in a Thai action film in the past several years. Featuring a mix of hard-core stunts and CGI, as well as at least two continuous, one-take sequences that are amazing to see in their complexity, outdoing the continuous sequence in Tom Yum Goong (The Protector). However, my two favorite scenes were a brutal game of soccer in an abandoned factory, and a fight featuring an old, bald 'Chinese doctor'/kung fu master.

All that being said, the film suffers from a lack of character development. The two main characters, Thee and Than, are seeking to find their murdered parents' killers. To be brief, there are plenty of emotionally-acted scenes, but I felt nothing, because I didn't really 'know' the characters. I did not feel any connection with them, as their development was only superficial.

Also, the film has some weird editing. In one scene will be an emotional exchange between Thee and his uncle, who took him and his brother in, and the next, he's dressed in stylish clothes and has already found a group of bad guys to assassinate. The protagonists and the villains just always know where to find each other, immediately. Now obviously, the Thai MA films are always centered on the next big stunt-fest, and there are plenty here. But without that strong character development, it robs the fight scenes of a great deal of their intended emotional impact. And therein lies the weakness of the Thai action films. In spite of the newer, slicker, creative stunts, the storyline is mundane and the emotional connection to the characters is basically nonexistent, in spite of their tearful scenes. The Thai MA films have still failed to keep pace with the times in developing strong characters and storylines as (for example) Gareth Evans' first 3 Indonesian action films have succeeded in doing.

Beyond that, however, for any lovers of brutal, creative stunt work, this film is highly recommended.