'Bangkok Dangerous' an interesting failure

By Dan Moore

Published Sept. 8, 2008

Nicolas Cage's latest film, "Bangkok Dangerous," is better than "Ghost Rider" but worse than "National Treasure."

That there is an established hierarchy of mediocre Nicolas Cage action movies says more about his idiosyncratic, if not completely incomprehensible, movie choices than it does about his considerable acting talents. What's odd is not that he keeps making these movies, which are presumably very lucrative; it is that he seems, somehow, to be enjoying them. With "Bangkok Dangerous" - more directly, with a third of it - we get the closest glimpse yet of what Cage is trying to do, but our view is obscured by still more mediocre action.

In this remake - the original was the Thai blockbuster of 1999 - Nicolas Cage plays a dour assassin named Joe on the prototypical one-last-mission. He arrives in Bangkok, filmed in uninspiring blue-gray grit-o-vision, and receives photographs of his last four victims. He plans on killing them quickly and retiring to do whatever it is retired contract killers do - wait for sequels to be announced, I guess - but this being the first half-hour of the movie, his plans quickly change.

Our assassin and his movie both seem aware of the unremarkable nature of this situation. His first two kills are carried out so matter-of-factly that an hour into the movie nothing seems to have happened. Everyone goes through the action movie motions until Joe, looking for some Neosporin in a Bangkok convenience store, meets a girl. A girl he's not even supposed to kill! This is the rare assassin-thriller film that doesn't begin, for the assassin and for the filmmakers, until the cold-blooded killer goes on his first date.

It is this bizarre injection of humanity into these rote genre surroundings that make "Bangkok Dangerous" an interesting failure, instead of just a failure. Joe, who has not yet spoken to anyone he doesn't want to kill, finds himself trying to woo, in English, a girl named Fon who is not only Thai but also deaf and mute. Joe asks her out with the help of her coworker, and they go to dinner on the motorcycle he just used to escape from a crime scene.

From the drug store, still awash in the movie's palette of grays, they drive to a restaurant that appears to exist on another planet. Suddenly there are warm reds and oranges; suddenly there is Thai music, slow and romantic, instead of nervous street noises and the throbbing score; suddenly Joe, so far a bundle of Nicolas Cage tics, is mugging and making frantic, smiling pantomimes for water when he tries a particularly hot Thai dish. Then, just as quickly, it ends, with Joe realizing that Fon can't exist in his world.

This bizarre oasis, surrounded by disinterestedly filmed action, is the heart of the film, and Cage's performance here gives its mediocre bookends a sad glow. Joe is no longer an action hero, after his date; he's someone trying - and ultimately failing - to make the best of his bad situation. If you're unlucky enough to go to a movie over this slow week, seeing "Bangkok Dangerous" will achieve the same ends.