#54: Bangkok Dangerous (2008)

My name is Ed and I have watched 53 Nicolas Cage films and entered the lottery 53 times and I have never killed anyone not even one person I swear.

Bangkok Dangerous is the Pang Brothers’ own remake of their 1999 debut, a Thai thriller about a deaf-mute hitman. In the retooled US version, Cage takes the lead, but not the hearing problem, which is transferred to the love interest. This decision, by the directors’ own admission driven by marketing rather than creativity, is a shame, as seeing Cage take an (in effect) silent role would at least make something stand out about this otherwise fairly dull film.

Our ‘hero’ Joe isn’t really much of a character: he’s sad because his job is shooting people and then when he’s finished he has to shoot the people who helped him shoot the people. Poor Joe. But we never get any insight into this, given that he can’t be honest (or even really communicate) with the one character who has any sympathy for him, his deaf-mute girlfriend. He just sits on the screen looking mournful as he does unpleasant things. I mean, he also hangs out with his sidekick and we get to wonder if he will shoot him in the head like he did the last one, so that’s a lot of fun.

There’s nothing offensively bad about any of this, it’s just sort of drab, livened up only by a handful of moments of competently shot action. The romantic sub-plot is presumably supposed to act as relief but is in itself a bit tortuously saccharine as it basically just consists of them grinning at each other like idiots until she realises he’s a hitman and looks upset at him instead. In the main, miserable things happen miserably, mostly in shades of brown and grey.

The film drifts to the inevitably bloody, unhappy, conclusion that all films about slightly sad hitman have legally required reach, and I was mainly left thinking that it has been a while since I’ve seen Leon. Even his hair’s doing that thing it was doing in ‘Next’ where it looks like it wants to fly away to star in a better movie.

THE NUMBERS

4 — The Bangkok job involves making 4 hits. A hit means to kill someone. Don’t do it, that’s illegal.
9 — The hit we see Joe make in the opening happens at precisely 9pm, according to his Ventura V-Tec Sigma W25-R1.
19 — Production of the film was held up by the Thai coup d’état, which took place on Tuesday 19 September 2006. Probably more exciting than the film, too.
25 — Joe’s much-featured watch, as noted above, is the Ventura V-Tec Sigma W25-R1. Why not buy one and tell them the idiot lottery man sent you?
28 — According to his false passport, Joe was born on 28 May 71. Cage was actually born in 1964, so we can only conclude that Joe is a very vain man.
46 — Joe’s account code for the account where he keeps all his murder money is 6514346.

THE RESULT

I hate stupid hitmen. 0 numbers.

Let me win the lottery. Please. I just want to win it once.

NEXT TIME ON NICOLAS CAGE:

Knowing. IT’S ABOUT NUMBERS THAT PREDICT THE FUTURE.

This is it guys. This is it.