Bangkok,
the capital of Thailand, is one of the safest cities in the
world for a tourist. The free feeling as one walks the streets
of the City of Angels is only marred by overzealous pimps
in the Patpong section of the city. Gun control is very strict,
with licenses issued for gun ownership only to those who attest
that they are in an insecure situation. The film Bangkok
Dangerous, directed by the brothers Oxide and Danny
Pang, tries a Hongkong style gangster film with a Thai twist.
The lead character is Kong (played by Pawalit Mongkolpisit),
who has evidently been deaf from an early age; teased by his
school classmates, he feels powerless as a child to redress
the harassment, but a desire for revenge evidently lurks inside
him. Lacking a marketable skill from his education for a decent
job, he is a janitor in a shooting arcade. One day Joe (played
by Pisek Intrakanchit) comes to the arcade, befriends him,
and teaches him to be a marksman. Kong imagines that the bullets
shooting ducks are aimed at his former schoolmate persecutors.
Joe then recruits him to become a hit man, and they live together
as underlings of a crime boss. Kong’s marksmanship is
extraordinary, and his deafness is an advantage, because he
does not react to sounds that might distract his aim. Aom
(played by Patharawarin Timkul), a stripper and take-out prostitute
in a go-go bar, doubtless in Patpong, is the one who dispatches
assassination orders and cash from the boss to the two hit
men; she is Joe’s girlfriend. During the film we observe
a few assassinations, including a reconstruction of the actual
murder of an executive manager of a broadcasting station in
the late 1990s. One day Kong wanders into a pharmacy in search
of medicine to ease a headache. Fon (played by Premsinee Ratanasopha),
an attractive pharmacist on duty, assists him to find the
correct pills. The next day Kong returns to thank her, as
the pain went away. Thereafter, she and Kong become friends
and go on dates together, and filmviewers will feel even deeper
sympathy for him as he finds joy with a beautiful girl. When
Kong eventually dies in a shootout, she appears on the scene
to provide the tears for the audience for the tragedy of a
fallen angel. Thailand’s first gangster film evidently
serves as a wake-up call to the mistreatment of the deaf and
to the presence of the criminal underworld amid the glitter
of Bangkok, but many Thais are likely to be embarrassed that
the image of their country in Bangkok Dangerous
is tainted by such an unrepresentative picture. MH
I
want to comment on this film
