Bangkok Dangerous

🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿

🎙️ EPISODE 354: 05.12.2021 Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 9. Aside from a completely asinine and unnecessary love interest subplot involving a deaf and mute pharmacist (which we'll get to! of course we will! hold your dang horses!), Bangkok Dangerous is a departure from the other bad entries thus far in the Nicolas Cage filmography in that it's simply a ho-hum, paint-by-numbers action/crime flick. It offers up a few genuinely nice action set-pieces, but is largely – otherwise – forgettable. And outside of the aforementioned love story, there's not too much unintentional comedy. We open with some Cage voiceover and some 10 outta 10 Cage hair. He's a hitman named Joe who's just finished up a job in the intro, and now he's off for a "vacation" in good old Bangkok, a classic 4-hit job which is to be his last in the hitman game before retitement...

What could possibly go wrong? As soon he arrives, he goes looking for a local scammer to become his sidekick/translator. He immediately finds a pickpocket named Kong and hands him some money in a totally normal way...


The first twenty minutes or so are incredibly boring and I thought for a second that I was in for the first bonafide stinker of the bunch. There is the introduction of an elephant theme/metaphor which would continue consistently throughout the whole movie. Is it interesting? intelligent? compelling in any way? Hell no! But Cage does feed a baby elephant bananas so I went ahead and made an elephant supercut for you, for some goddam reason...


Cage uzis a bunch of a guys at an intersection to complete job #1, but he gets a minor scratch in the process. Oh no! This sets up the deaf pharmacist love subplot because he just can't go into a store and buy Neosporin and a bandaid? If you're telling me that Nicolas Cage falls in love with a deaf pharmacist because he got a scratch on his motorcycle then I'm telling you that this movie is good now...


If your initial response to that is WHY, you aren't alone. That's the natural response. I tried to figure out why this completely asinine element was shoehorned in here, and I think I found it. It's not a good reason, but this movie is a remake of the Pang Brothers' 1999 movie of the same which featured a deaf/mute HITMAN in the lead. I guess they just felt like they needed to incorporate that very specific detail in SOME way here so, voila: deaf pharmancist love interest. It's funny that Cage just did a movie where he doesn't a speak a line of a dialogue (Wally's Wonderland, way down on our A-Z watchlist unfortunately), but in 2008, the thought of not speaking was, well, umm, I suppose "unspeakable" for Mr. Cage. Anyway, every single scene involving these two is a goldmine and I will clipping most all of them for you on this very blog post. What can I say except "You're Welcome..."

Then, the other main subplot is set up: Kong becoming Cage's protege, and not just a hired hand. This happens through a pretty awkward, impromptu, knife fight defense lesson (?)...


This spawns the first of several training montages where the two of them do martial arts in the yard and shoot at watermelons in Cage's garage of the fancy house he's rented – umm, thought he was trying to lay low! This seems like a bad idea...


Then Cage kills the job #2 mark, pool crocodile style...


After brutally murdering several people, Cage asks the deaf pharmacist on a date and they proceed to have some spicy food and share a nice laugh in this oddly long sequence...


There are at least two or three more montages in the middle part of the film. My favorite of the bunch is this one, which ends with Cage buying his sidekick a motorcycle and watching his new deaf pharmacist gf (DPG) do a nice little dance...


Seriously, this reaction is so perfect. Like a weird proud dad WTF...


This is all extremely funny to me (a crazy person), but none of it is explicitly bad per say. The Pang Brothers, who have mostly worked in the Hong Kong film market (this Kristen Stewart horror is their only other English language production), seem to know what they're doing: moving the camera effectively, framing shots etc. At the very least they saw Meet the Parents (2000)...


Look at Cage's tea sip style. Perfection...


Then the two lovebirds have a moment where he learns what her name means. It's not supposed to be funny, but it is...


Next up is by far the best sequence in the movie, and – honestly – a nicely done sequence by any action movie's standards. Gondola speedboat / motorcycle chase, segueing directly into an over-the-top bloody loss of hand: it's job #3....


Just brilliantly done! I tip my hat.

The main conflict the rest of the way is murky at best, but basically Cage has one final job to do and it's the biggest of them all: take out a major politician Lee Harvey Oswald style as he rides in a convertible during some kind of parade/rally. But his sidekick Kong tells him that the this political guy is a genuinely good guy and he runs into other problems with the villains who have ordered these four hits to begin with so... the dudes who originally commissioned him are the bad guys now. As you might have guessed, this is an issue from a motivational standpoint since these "villains" have had basically no screen time. But let's not get bogged down in practical matters like that.

Cage is ambushed by some of these foes while he's out with his DPG and – at first – it looks like he's gonna get away with killing them while literally out on a date because – that's right – she can't hear the gun! But then a ton of blood splatters on her and that's pretty much relationship dealbreaker 101...


Plot-wise, it definitely feels like this one was written into a corner and the last third is a total hot mess. Cage has a crazy voiceover where he tries to make sense of things but he just muddies it more, saying – among other things – "anyone can assassinate a politician" (???) ...


So is Cage gonna kill this guy or not?? He ponders the question deeply while lurking in the shadows...


Ultimately he decides against pulling the trigger but not before this insane fake-out sequence where we see what it would have looked like if he had? ...


(Sidebar: That is such a comical and strange JFK in Dallas homage, right? From the convertible, to the turn, to the lone gunman in the building: so weird.)

Well, anyway, the final fifteen minutes is a chaotic, violent shitshow. Cage steals someone's baseball hat...


...avoids some homemade bombs in his bathtub....


...pays a final, wordless visit to the DFG where he just bows towards her and then bounces...


...gets in a cool gunfight at a pink water jug factory...



Honestly, other than a few moments in that pink-lit room, it's all fairly blah. But he has a nice penultimate showdown with this blonde guy who gets blown in half...


He saves his sidekick Kong and a stripper (don't worry about it) and engages the final boss as the cops descend on this factory. He ends up in a Benz with this guy and decides to kill himself AND the bad guy with a single bullet through both of their heads which IS A CHOICE...


Look. Cage had already been shot in the chest a few minutes earlier, the police were surrounding him and he totally fucking blew it with the deaf pharmacist... What would you have done in this situation? The movie ends immediately after this with his sidekick staring out into the void as the credits roll...


LoL. Everyone clearly just wanted to go home at that point. That's Bangkok for ya.

THE VERDICT: 5 CAGES OUT OF 10 • CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 353 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 355 ⫸

---