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Review: Dangerous Flowers (Chai-Lai)

Directed by Poj Arnon
Starring Bongkot Kongmalai, Supaksorn Chaimongkol, Kessarin Ektawatkul, Jintara Poonlarp, Bhunyawong Phongsuwa, Arya aya pradana
Rating: 1/5

Painful and pointless, the meager offering of eye-candy moments for male action fans aren't worth the effort it would take to view this awful movie.

Bongkot Kongmalai (Ai Fak, Tom Yum Goong), Supaksorn Chaimongkol (Andaman Girl), Kessarin Ektawatkul (Born to Fight), morlam singer Jintara Poonlap and Arya aya pradana TV comedy troupe comedian Bhunyawong Phongsuwan star as five sexy super crimefighters who all have the names of flowers (Lotus, Hibiscius, Rose, Arthurian, Crown of Thorns).

They are out to solve the kidnapping of the daughter (Narawan "Grace" Techaratanaprasert) of a Japanese businessman who holds the secret to the prized "Pearl of the Andaman".

It starts out on an airline flight, with four of the Chai-Lais already on the job, disguised as flight attendants and passengers. The fifth, meanwhile, is on the ground, chasing the bad guys down a rural highway, using her sportscar to try and stop an SUV. With her car too smashed to continue, she gets out and stands in the road, and stops traffic with her dynamite looks.

Back on the plane, it's all hijinx and high kicks as the Chai-Lais foil the kidnapping, which was led in part by the evil transvestite King Kong (Wannasak "Kuck" Sirilar).

If the movie would have ended there, I would have been happy, but unfortunately there's another 90 minutes to go, so more screaming, big explosions, gunshots and a horrible, booming synthesizer soundtrack must ensue before the movie can finally end. And one of the best parts is the ending credits, where there's the spectacle of nine-year-old Narawan blasting everything in sight with an M-60 machine gun.

There are two underwater scenes (cheesecake for the boys) and a traffic chase or two, and a big wire-fu fight scene in the lobby of an office building, where the Chai-Lais are all wearing towels. Try doing some kung-fu kicks while you're wrapped in terrycloth sometime.

Some romance is thrown in. Bongkot's character has her heart-wrenching moments with a boyfriend Krit Sripoomsed (from Buppha Rahtree).

Jintara is paired with Nithichai "Yuan" Yotamornsunthorn from the Dragon 5 boy band strictly for the comedic effect of a young central Thai guy falling for the darker-skinned, flat-nosed, older Isaan singing star. Some jokes are made about Jintara's character - about her speaking the Isaan (Northeast Thailand) dialect and such - that got a lot of laughs. Low-class humor and racism is alive and well.

Later on, when those jokes have worn out (as well as jokes about the cross-dressing King Kong), Jintara shows up driving a tank, but by then the focus is on a cross-eyed villain.

Mum Jok Mok provides some laughs as the Chai-Lai's handler. He appears in an increasingly hilarious variety of wigs.

The action isn't that great. Born to Fight star Kessarin Ektawatkul - a national tai kwan do champion, gets to practice a tough stance while riding atop a moving van, but any hand-to-hand action is framed too tightly and edited too fleetingly to really give any sense that there was any real fighting going on.

It's also sloppy. While the story takes time out for jokes about the cross-eyed woman not being able to drive or shoot straight, you see the rest of the characters just standing around in the background doing nothing.

But you can do something - stay away from this.

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)

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Fireball

Review: Fireball

Directed by Thanakorn Pongsuwan
Written by Thanakorn Pongsuwan, Taweewat Wantha and Uncle
Starring Preeti "Bank Clash" Barameeanan, 9 Million Sam, Anuwat Jeg, Kumpanart Ungsoonmern, Karnnut Samerjai, Phutharit Prombundarn, Kantura "Aem" Chuchuaysuwan, Arucha Tosawat
Released in Thai cinemas on January 29, 2009
Rating: 3/5

The first rule of Fireball is: you do not talk about Fireball.

The second rule of Fireball is: you do not talk about Fireball.

Ah, never mind. Actually, you can talk about Fireball.

And the main rule in Fireball (also Tarchon, Ta/Chon or ท้า/ชน) is the first team to put the basketball through the hoop wins.

That's harder than it sounds, because the two teams of five men will be doing all they can to prevent that from happening, with clothesline punches and roundhouse kicks, even to the point of killing a player.

If no basket has been scored, then the winning team is the one with the last man who's able to get up off the floor and stand.

It's a brilliant concept, ripe for the gritty, no-holds-barred, no-wires, no-CGI kind of martial-arts action film that fans have been clamoring for more of since the original Ong-Bak in 2003.

Unfortunately, Fireball isn't it.

It breaks the rules of good filmmaking.

Every single action scene is marred by that bane of martial-arts films -- shakey cam and zoom-lens cropping. The camera is constantly shifting around, so much that it's stomach-churning. And the framing is so tight it's difficult to get a sense of the action, of who's being hit and who's doing the hitting.

It's too bad. Because otherwise, Fireball could have been great.

Keeping the things moving along is a lean, mean screenplay that sticks to the bare essentials of the plot and still manages to humanize the various characters. Director Thanakorn Pongsuwan co-wrote the story with Taweewat Wantha (SARS Wars, The Sperm) and producer "Uncle" Adirek Wattaleela (who also co-edited). It's the first production from Bangkok Film Studio, reconstituted from the ashes of Uncle's old production house, Film Bangkok.

Preeti Barameeanan, better known as Bank of the Thai rock band Clash, stars as Tai, a tattooed ex-con just out of the joint. He arrives home to find that his twin brother Tan (also Bank) is in the hospital. He's been comatose for around a year.

Tan's girlfriend (Kantura Chuchuaysuwan) explains that Tan had been coming home with mysterious cuts and bruises.

"He said he was playing basketball, but I'm not stupid. I think he was doing something illegal."

Well, they are both correct. He was playing basketball -- a highly illegal form of it called "fireball" -- a mafia-controlled bloodsport.

Tai is determined to find out who put his brother in the hospital, so he starts hanging around at courtside on the street.

Just from standing around looking like a bad-ass -- which is essentially all Bank does -- he's recruited for a team put together by the youngblood gangster Den (Phutharit Prombundarn).

The players in this brawling game are boxers, football hardmen, tough basketballers and various other brutes.

The team is headed up by Singh (former boxer 9 Million Sam), a fierce, banty pug of a guy. The squad is rounded out by Ig (Karnnut Samerjai), the "secret weapon" ball-handler; the half-African Muek (former Thai national soccer goalkeeper Kumpanart Ungsoonmern) and K (Anuwat Jeg), who is for some reason not trusted by his other teammates.

The movie quickly moves from one match to the next, taking brief interludes to show the behind-the-scenes fixing by the mafia chieftans and fleshing out the backstory of the team members. Singha sells TV sets for a living. Ig hopes to earn money to move his parents out of the slums. Muek works in the slaughterhouse and has a pregnant wife. And K is working hard at keeping emotionally distant from his prostitute girlfriend (Porntip Papanai -- I wish somebody would cast her as a teacher, nurse or prime minister.)

The movie is set in the forgotten no-man's zone areas of Bangkok -- highway underpasses and corrugated-tin-shack ghettos, which underscores the idea that everyone on this team is an expendable low-class underdog.

Everyone thinks Tai is Tan, and he lets them believe it. He quickly discovers that the guy who injured his brother is a dyed-blond psychopath named Ton (Arucha Tosawat). But rules against fighting off court prevent the two from seriously tangling until the final showdown. So it's only a matter of time.

There's a comical group of old-timer mafia bosses, including Kowit Wattanakul and Ong-Bak baddie Suchao Pongvilai.

Of the fireballers, 9 Million Sam puts on the strongest performance, I think because he could actually do his own stunts and throw his own punches and kicks. He's a furious fighter and great fun to watch.

There's a training sequence in which the boys have to race from the roof of a tenement apartment building to put a ball in the hoop at the playground several stories below. So they jump from balcony to balcony and storm through hallways, kitchens and alleys. A transgendered man has her top ripped off. But it's not quite Tony Jaa's footchase in Ong-Bak, again, because of that damn shakey cam.

There's a ballgame in the rain. There's a cage match in which the opposing team is given steel bars to wield -- hey that's not fair! And the final sequence takes place in the drydock of a Royal Thai Navy shipyard, with pallet-sized stacks of wooden timbers obstructing the court. Try moving a ball to the goal with those things in the way, and with somebody trying to kill you.

An epilogue over the closing credits cleans things up nicely and left me more or less happy, even if my head was still spinning and my stomach was still flopping from the poorly framed action scenes.

See also:

FireballTheMovie.com

Related posts:

Monday, February 2, 2009

Variety Asia is shuttered

Variety Asia is the latest victim of the global media crisis. Editor-in-chief Patrick Frater and Marcus Lim, the Web editor and Hong Kong correspondent, are among the workers kicked to the curb.

They make it official in a notice today.

The shutdown means the Variety Asia Online website will no longer be updated, its RSS feeds will go dead and its helpful daily e-mail newsletter will no longer be sent.

Grady Hendrix' Asian film blog, Kaiju Shakedown "will no longer be updated under the aegis of Variety Asia". Whatever that means.

Hints of Variety Asia's demise was first mentioned on Twitch over the weekend.

I am uncertain whether Variety will continue to carry news from its correspondents in the region, such as Kong Rithdee.

Where Variety Asia's reports once were, there will now be a void. It's sad.

Update: Account manager Gurjeet Chima is the sole survivor. (Via @ThomasCrampton)

Update 2: Kung Fu Cinema's Mark Pollard has a report.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Special NETPAC mention for Agrarian Utopia in Rotterdam

Agrarian Utopia, the new feature by Uruphong Raksasad, was given a special mention by the NETPAC jury at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema jury comprised producer Shan Donbing from China, journalist Okubo Ken’ichi from Japan and filmmaker Sun Koh from Singapore. Here's the jury's statement:

The jury would like to commend the maker of Agrarian Utopia for his bravery, his folly and his determination in showing us his little piece of heaven."

Interesting. Makes me want to see this film even more. Agrarian Utopia has received support from IFFR's Hubert Bals Fund. It was shot around the filmmaker's village in Chiang Rai.

Among the Thai lineup at Rotterdam, one short film, Man and Gravity by Jakrawal Nilthamrong, was in the VRPO Tiger Awards competition, but it wasn't among the three winners.

The complete report on the IFFR awards is on on the IFFR website.

(From IFFR press release via e-mail subscription)

Friday, January 30, 2009

Before Valentine comes early

Before Valentine (ก่อนรัก...หมุนรอบตัวเรา), an ensemble romantic comedy from Five Star Production, has opened in Bangkok cinemas for a sneak preview run, a week ahead of its planned February 5 release.

It's directed by Songsak Mongkoltong, who previously directed 2007's rather enigmatic psychological ghost thriller, The Screen at Kamchanod.

Mainly teen oriented, though there's an older married couple involved as well, the stories deal with four different couples, each trying to sort out their feelings and problems in the weeks leading up to Valentine's Day.

The cast includes Thanachat Tulayachat from Boonchu 9 as well as Tanakrit Panitchwit, Diana Jongjintanakarn, Klaokaew Sintepdol, Sita Thanunchotikan, and Tata Young's former fiance, Prem Busarakhamwon.

MovieSeer has a synopsis. And there's a trailer on YouTube, which is embedded below. Deknang has a page and forum thread. Oh, and there's an official website too.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Fireball, burnt by airport closure, finally opens

Fireball (Tarchon) opened in Thailand's cinemas today, offering a unique blend of hard-hitting Muay Thai kicks and bloody, no-fouls-called basketball.

Directed by Thanakorn Pongsuwan, who previously helmed Opapatika and Fake, Fireball is the first production by Bangkok Film Studio, a reboot of the old Film Bangkok run by producers Sa-ngar Chatchairungruang and "Uncle" Adirek Wattaleela. They backed some of the first Thai films to make it big on the international scene, like the original Bangkok Dangerous, Tears of the Black Tiger and Bang Rajan.

When I talked to the filmmakers last September, they said the idea behind the company was to make films with the international market in mind with sponsorship from companies not normally associated with the movie business. Red Bull is among the backers of Fireball, so you can expect to see product placement for the energy drink.

Initially, Fireball was to be distributed by a company called Adamas World, a Thailand-based concert promoter that brought the Korean acts Rain and Super Junior to Bangkok.

Fireball was planned for release in November or December, but the months came and went and there was no Muay Thai basketball.

What happened? Well, for around 10 days at the end of November, a mob of anti-government protesters blockaded both of Bangkok's airports, playing havoc with travelers (like me) and causing a major disruption in the Kingdom's commerce. Adamas had planned a "super concert" of Korean bands in Bangkok around that time, and with the airports shut down, the bands couldn't fly in. Adamas canceled the concert, lost a ton of money and had to pull out of Fireball.

However, the ever-resourceful Uncle and Sa-ngar were able to broker a deal with none other than Phranakorn Film, which will handle the Thai distribution rights.

Fireball also introduces a tough new face to international audiences -- Preeti Barameeanan, better known as Bank, tattooed frontman for the Thai rock band Clash. His cheekbones alone look like they'll devastate an opponent.

Rounding out the cast are some athletes: a boxer known as Nine Million Sam, model and former basketball player "Earth" Anuwat Jeg, former soccer player "Johnny" Kumpanart Ungsoonmern and basketball player "Bas" Karnnut Samerjai.

The lead actress is "Aem" Kantura Chuchuaysuwan, who's been on TV shows and in music videos.

The story involves Bank as a guy named Tai who gets out of prison and finds his twin brother Tan laid up in a coma. To find out who put the hurt on Tan, Tai joins the Fireball, a team playing in an underworld bloodsport.

There's a trailer on Phranakorn Film's YouTube channel, and it's embedded below.

See also:

(Via Daily Xpress)

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Nak reviewed in Rotterdam

TwitchFilm.net's man in Rotterdam, Ard Vin, reviews Nak, one of the selections in the Hungry Ghosts program at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Released in Thailand last year, Nak turns Thailand's most famous ghost Mae Nak into a kid-friendly heroine who teams up with other famous Thai ghosts to save a little boy's soul from an evil Korean movie ghost.

Ard Vin gives good marks to Nak, praising the colorful if uneven cel-shaded 3D computer animation and the decent-enough story.

Head on over and check it out.

World Comedy Film Festival set for April 23-29

Kong Rithdee in Variety yesterday has details of the World Comedy Film Festival being planned by the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

Here's the details so far:

It will be held April 23-29.
It will be co-hosted with the Federation of National Film Associations of Thailand with FNFAT's Nakorn Veerapravati as festival director.
It will feature around 60 movies, including classic Thai comedies.
The budget is around 60 million baht.

So far so good.

(Thank you Bangkok Dan)

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