Bangkok Dangerous

The life of an anonymous assassin takes an unexpected turn when he travels to Thailand to compklete a series of contract killings.  Joe (Nicholas Cage), a remorseless hitman, is in Bangkok to execute four enemies of a ruthless crime boss named Surat.  

He hires Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm), a street punk and pick pocket, to run errands for him with the intention of covering his tracks by killing him at the end of the assignment.  Strangely, Joe, the ultimate lone wolf, instead finds himself mentoring the young man while simultaneously being drawn into a tentative romance with a local shop girl.  As he falls further under the sway of Bangkok’s intoxicating beauty, Joe begins to question his isolated existence and let down his guard just as Surat decides it’s time to clean house.

Directed by the Pang brothers, Nick Cage is back in another mediocre action film with a stupid hair cut, this guy almost needs a big hit as much as Vin Diesel and unfortunately for him Bangkok Dangerous just doesn’t deliver.  

The plot is quite generic; hitman gets bored, wants to do ‘one last job’, decides to break his rules (I hate it when they do a voice over explaining their rules!), connects with people and then can’t bring himself to finish the job for some reason or other.  The ending is slightly original but everything up until that is standard of hitman films.  

Nick Cage looks the mean and moody part (except for his stupid hair) but he doesn’t manage to make this mediocre actioner anything better than average.  Some of the set pieces are exciting but really if Nick Cage hadn’t done this movie chances are Steven Seagal or Dolph Lundgren would have and it would have been straight to DVD.

Avoid this unless you have a strange compulsion to watch every single Nicholas Cage movie.

DVD Extras

-Alternate Ending

-”From Hong Kong to Bangkok: A look at Hong Kong Cinema” Featurette

-”Bangkok Dangerous: The Execution of the Film” Featurette

-Theatrical Trailer

-Digital Copy of the film