Goal Club
Director: Kittikorn Liasirikun
Year: 2001
Starring: Suviporn Surattanaves, Suwanhom
Theeranai, Yuto Boriwat, Tantrakul Wongwarut
Time: 99 minutes
This fast moving, quickly edited and stylish
film contains a lot of energy and is fairly entertaining. It has a number
of threads that at times become a bit confusing (especially since there
were no subs!) and some of the threads feel less interesting than others
do. Still the young actors are all quite good and they give personable
performances that make you want to follow their story to the end. Much
of the early going is a fairly light coming of age/friendship narrative,
but towards the end it turns surprisingly dark and violent.
As best as I could understand it, this is about
five young guys just out of high school who seem to have a knack for calling
the outcome of English football games that are being shown and gambled
on in the many small betting joints around Bangkok. Soon the local gang
sees their talents and recruits them as runners and collectors. The film
goes off with each character to some degree – one who meets a girl (a member
of the group Triumph’s Kingdom), another gets involved with a bar girl
and so on. Eventually they decide to thumb their nose at the gang and set
up their own betting shop. Bad decision. The gangsters don’t take too kindly
to this incursion into their turf and get very nasty. By the end there
are a lot of dead bodies spread around town.
The Thai VCD does not contain subs.
My rating for this film: 6.5
Killer Tattoo
Director: Yuthlert Sippapak
Year: 2001
Starring: Somchai Khemklad, Thao Rae, Mum
Jokmok, Thep Po-ngam, Theng Therdtherng
Time: 111 minutes
With a Hong Kong retro 1980’s B movie action
feel, this film manages to blast its way into your affections. It has at
times an unruly mix of comedy, melodrama and bullet ballet that seems a
bit chaotic and slapdash but is still entertaining and enjoyable. The final
twenty minutes is a rip it up all hands aboard shoot out that should bring
a smile to the face of most HK gunfight aficionados.
The setting takes place a few years into the future
and the city of Bangkok is in economic chaos with the foreigners (falangs)
having taken over many of the Thai corporations. Four over the hill killers
are mistakenly hired to kill one of the top cops in the law enforcement.
As a backup a fifth killer is also hired, the highly respected, Kid Silence.
The four killers (all top Thai comedians) have their sad backgrounds as
a hindrance – the Cheech lookalike killed his wife in an accident and her
ghost haunts his dreams, one of them dresses like Elvis and refuses to
speak anything but English (very bad English), another is broken-hearted
by a woman’s rejection and another has sad memories of his little girl
that he left behind many years ago. Kid has his demons as well – he witnessed
his mother being killed by a man with a tattoo on his arm when he was a
child and has been searching for that tattoo ever since to administer his
own justice.
The party of four and the lone killer all make
their hit at the same place and barely escape. The man who hired them decides
he wants them all dead and sends another group of professional killers
after them – one being a smart talking falang female in boots, halter and
an assortment of guns. In a Thai bordello of sweet dreams all the threads
and pasts of the men catch up with them in a fight to the death. The film
has a few slow parts in the middle and bogs down a bit in the flashbacks,
but is generally a fast moving tale of killing and memories.
Neither the Thai DVD or VCD have subs (I saw
it in a film festival with subs).
My rating for this film: 7.5
Tigress of the King River
Director: Bhandit Rittakol
Year: 2002
Starring: Panu Suwanno, Prangthong Changdham,
Sunisa Brown
Time: 1 hour 57 minutes
Mixing the supernatural and an old-fashioned
jungle action adventure, this B film rarely slows down for a minute and
is generally fairly enjoyable on a simplistic lose no brain cells level.
In the back of your mind though you are always aware that the film isn’t
really that well made and at times it feels more like a fun TV show that
contains some atrocious acting (in particular from the Englishman). Even
so, a film with an elephant tromping on people and a man-eating tiger that
takes human female form always works for me! The legendary/mythical mystique
that many of the Thai films seem to aim for is intriguing to me as it opens
a new world of tradition, history, superstition and customs that is fairly
fascinating. This film contains a degree of CGI effects that are far from
seamless but not badly done.
In the year of 1786 during the reign of King Rama
I, two forces are battling on the King River at the Three Pagoda Pass –
the clash of swords, the trumpeting of elephants and the blasts from muskets
fill the air. A Yodla slave elephant rider from Burma is shot from his
mount and floats down the river. Back in his village his wife, Niam, waits
for Klom to return and when he doesn’t she goes to the scene of the battle
to look for him. The jungle appears to be haunted by the dead armies of
many past and present wars still fighting one another. She is raped and
murdered by a group of passing men and then eaten by a tiger. Over the
next one hundred years a legend begins to grow of a demon tiger that kills
and a wandering war elephant that travel together.
In the late 1800’s a party from Bangkok comes
to hunt for tigers and elephants – with a drunken British ex-soldier and
a half-British half-Karen tribes woman female guide. Soon the tigress is
hunting them as it senses that the reincarnated spirits of the men who
killed her years ago is among them – and perhaps also that of the husband
she never found and is still looking for. The direction does feel awkward
at times and the budding romance between the Englishman and the guide is
acting hell, but the basic themes of revenge, reincarnation and eternal
love play out reasonably well – especially in the end.
The Thai DVD and VCD have English subs.
My rating for this film: 6.0