Bangkok Adrenaline
Bangkok Adrenaline
Director: Raimund Huber
Year: 2009
Duration: 85 minutes
Produced and written by a group of Farangs (i.e. Westerners), the film
hops on the Parkour/action film bandwagon with some fine action set pieces
that zip around Bangkok with a sense of fun and flair. Unfortunately, the
script is a mess and the story is at times nearly incoherent. When the film
isn’t flying, it is dead in its tracks with not nearly enough action to make
up for its failings. First time director, Huber, shows his inexperience with
numerous pointless scenes, extraneous shots that come to nothing and a pace
that falls into lulls that seem to have no purpose other than adding to the
running time. It also perhaps makes the mistake of adopting a lot of broad
slapstick Thai like humor that didn’t feel even mildly funny to me.
Now to be fair, the DVD that I watched had the four foreigners badly dubbed
into Thai and the subtitles may have made the film more confusing than it
really is. According to Wise Kwai, the original soundtrack was in English
but when it was released into Thai theaters only a Thai dubbed version was
shown. A DVD in the UK has the original soundtrack, but the one I ended up
with was purchased in Chinatown in NY and may be of questionable legitimacy.
As best as I could understand, four foreigners (Daniel O’Neill, Conan
Stevens, Raimund Huber and Gwlon Jacob Miles) live in Bangkok and are doing
their best to make ends meet by either theft, go-go dancing or fighting.
But it’s not enough and one night they end up in a gambling den where they
make the mistake of winning too often. The Thai boss doesn’t take kindly
to this and threatens their lives unless they help him with a job – kidnap
the lovely daughter (Praya Suandokmal) of a wealthy crooked businessman.
They successfully do this but collecting the money is a different matter
as the father has an unending number of martial arts minions to send after
the quartet.
The revelation of the film is actor Daniel O’Neill, who has been doing stunt
work for nearly a decade appearing in films such as Gen X Cops 2, Naked Weapon,
Twins Effect, Tom Yum Goong and The Bodyguard 2 – but here he is front and
center of the action set pieces with a dazzling array of Parkour and martial
arts skills. In particular there are two lengthy chases through the streets,
alleyways and roof tops of Bangkok that seem to be highly influenced by the
Tony Jaa chase in the first Ong Bak. O’Neill’s moves are equal to Jaa’s though
he doesn’t show nearly the power that Jaa has. It is impossible to evaluate
his acting skills in this dubbed version but he clearly has the looks to
become a leading action actor.
My rating for this film: 5.0
