Nicholas Cage Shave Your Head! Robert’s Review of Bangkok Dangerous
January 8th 2009 00:24
I’m generally not a big fan of movie remakes. If the movie good to begin with, like The Italian Job or the Poseidon Adventure, then what’s to be gained from cheapening it, watering it down, and adding a surprise ”twists?” If the movie was bad to begin with, like George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, then the movie should be locked away in a vault, buried deep in the earth, and never spoken of again.
This dislike I harbor is doubled when the movie being remade is an Asian film. Chinese and Japanese filmmakers have a unique sensibility that just cannot be replicated by their western counterparts. With a wave of Asian horror remakes flooding the American market, it was only a matter of time before the Asian action market was targeted by the greedy no talent hacks in Hollywood. There have been some doozies out there.
Fortunately, Bangkok Dangerous escaped that torture by being remade by remade by the people who made it in the first place, the Pang brothers.
The movie is a high action story about a troubled assassin who’s struggling with employers who double cross him and his own internal demons. He’s sent to Bangkok to kill four people and sees the big paycheck he’s got coming as his ticket out of the business. Unfortunately, he breaks his own rules and lets his emotional guard down taking a promising young student, Kong, under his wing and falling in love with a beautiful deaf girl named Charlie Young (played coincidentally as Charlie Yeung.)
The script is pretty solid, the performances are top drawer stuff, and the locations are simply amazing. The only thing that detracts from the movie is Nicholas Cage’s hair plugs! And if they aren’t plugs they sure look like them. Seems strange that with all of the special effects technology available to movie makers nowadays that they can’t find a decent wig to fit Nicholas Cage’s head.
I spent an hour and a half wishing Mr. Cage would just shave his head. I mean, even if he has a grotesque melon head or some hideous scar or something it would be better than having his hair detract from a movie. How bad is that, his hair actually took my attention away from the action?
While I was hoping that he would get together with the deaf woman (the actress is extremely good looking and her character possesses that enticing vulnerability that very few American actresses can muster) but the ending of the movie is far from happy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not apposed to a movie having an emotional, sad, or downright depressing ending if it fits but Bangkok Dangerous led me to believe there would at least be some light at the end of the tunnel. There wasn’t and I don’t think there will be until Nicholas Cage decides to man up and either shave his head or join the hair club for men!
This dislike I harbor is doubled when the movie being remade is an Asian film. Chinese and Japanese filmmakers have a unique sensibility that just cannot be replicated by their western counterparts. With a wave of Asian horror remakes flooding the American market, it was only a matter of time before the Asian action market was targeted by the greedy no talent hacks in Hollywood. There have been some doozies out there.
Fortunately, Bangkok Dangerous escaped that torture by being remade by remade by the people who made it in the first place, the Pang brothers.
The movie is a high action story about a troubled assassin who’s struggling with employers who double cross him and his own internal demons. He’s sent to Bangkok to kill four people and sees the big paycheck he’s got coming as his ticket out of the business. Unfortunately, he breaks his own rules and lets his emotional guard down taking a promising young student, Kong, under his wing and falling in love with a beautiful deaf girl named Charlie Young (played coincidentally as Charlie Yeung.)
The script is pretty solid, the performances are top drawer stuff, and the locations are simply amazing. The only thing that detracts from the movie is Nicholas Cage’s hair plugs! And if they aren’t plugs they sure look like them. Seems strange that with all of the special effects technology available to movie makers nowadays that they can’t find a decent wig to fit Nicholas Cage’s head.
I spent an hour and a half wishing Mr. Cage would just shave his head. I mean, even if he has a grotesque melon head or some hideous scar or something it would be better than having his hair detract from a movie. How bad is that, his hair actually took my attention away from the action?
While I was hoping that he would get together with the deaf woman (the actress is extremely good looking and her character possesses that enticing vulnerability that very few American actresses can muster) but the ending of the movie is far from happy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not apposed to a movie having an emotional, sad, or downright depressing ending if it fits but Bangkok Dangerous led me to believe there would at least be some light at the end of the tunnel. There wasn’t and I don’t think there will be until Nicholas Cage decides to man up and either shave his head or join the hair club for men!
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