Features

James · #1

OK, the movie doesn't flat-out suck, but it could have been a lot better.

Generally, the action is a mix of "Look how awesome Muay Thai is!" and "Look how awesome a guy doing his own stunts is!" Two things that were shown to us by Sagat in Street Fighter II, and Jackie Chan. And shown better.

A lot of scenes are set up just for the convenience of having something awesome to showcase the stunts, rather than being feeling natural. For example, Ting (the main character) is running down alleys avoiding a gang of thugs. Through which, he jumps tables like they're hurdles, jumps through a cart of baskets (with the baskets peculiarly places like towers with a person-sized gap in the middle), and over a waist-high rack of sharp things.

As I thought to myself "Christ, they might as well have him jump through a flaiming hoop" the movie one-ups me by having him jump through a HOOP OF BARBED WIRE.

And each example of OMG AWESOMENESS~! is replayed in Multi-Angle-Michael-Bay-Explosion-Vision. So in case you just missed Ting sliding under a moving car, they'll show it to you two more times.

To top it off, the subtitles suck. They're more along the lines of Closed Captioning for the Hearing Impaired, rather than a simple subtitle job. Music's playing? Get ready for [Music playing] followed by [Music continues] every five seconds. Lyrics kicking in? [Singing] Someone gets punched, but you don't see it happening? [Punches]. Someone hurt? [Groans] Someone coughing? [Coughing] Someone speaking English? [English] I am NOT making these up.

And when it comes to actually translating the Thai language, it's hit or miss. [Shouting in Thai] [Indecipherable Thai] or just plain [Thai] will pop up more often than they should. While this is usually done in regard to background noise, some of the language can be distinctly heard and should be translated. OR NOT FUCKING POINTED OUT IN THE FIRST PLACE. [Shouting in English]

So, if you were really interested in this movie (possibly because a certain webmaster made an earlier thread saying how JAWESOME it was), I'd suggest a rental.

I'm sounding a lot angrier at this movie than I really am. A lot of little things are pissing me off, but overall the movie is fun to watch. It's just a lot of flash and little content.

sloth · #2

I really liked it. Criticising the film for having contrived scenes to showcase stunts is moot; it's a cornerstone of martial arts movies. Would characters really fight while balancing on pots if they had the choice? And as the subtitles, they were - as far as I can remember - fine. This was in the UK though. Like you said, it was a fun movie. But I don't remember any promotions or reviews giving the impression that this movie was ever going to yield a rich and involving storyline. If you walked into the cinema expecting a great deal of content then you must have been mislead.

MetalMilitia · #3

I thought it was super fantastic

Mockery · #4

Bullshit, that movie was entertaining as hell. You're taking action movies FAR too seriously if you're complaining about shit like "they put that object there just so he could do that stunt! HOW LAME!

"

Christ man, it's mindless entertainment with some extremely impressive martial arts / stuntwork. It's not fucking Schindler's List.

Zomboid · #5

So you're saying it's not as overrated as schindler's list?

James · #6

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mockery

It's not fucking Schindler's List.

Even you have to admit that if it WAS more like Schindler's List, it'd probably be the single greatest movie ever. Ting could have used his prize winnings to buy Jews.

And then fought them to win more money to buy more Jews.

I did generally enjoy the movie, but it just seemed to be OVERLY filled with convenient showcases for stuntwork at times. Like, hit-you-over-the-head moments of "Look at this! Stunts! OMG STUNTS!" I'm not berating the movie for being more about action than story. I'm just criticizing it for moments of poor execution of said action.

And the closed captioning really did get very annoying for me. Sure, the movie's not really about words, but I'm not deaf and don't need to be treated like I am. Especially when they decided "They, this is too hard to translate. I'll just say they're Shouting in Thai or something and call in a day."