Vengeance Of An Assassin (2014)

Soccer game: 3.25/5


Warehouse Fight: 3.25/5


Dr. Si Foo vs Assassins: 3.75/5


Garage/Train fight: 3.5/5


Than vs Assassins: 3.75/5


Than vs Pod: 2.75/5



Man, this was disappointing. Well, since this was Panna Rittikrai's last film (as a director) let's start with the positives. The best action scene in the movie isn't rated here by me because it's a shootout. Dan Chupong shoots his way through bad guys through a 4 minute long take with machine guns, grenades and explosions galore. You might be wondering, does Dan Chupong dual wield machine guns through the whole scene? The answer is yes. 

The choreography in the hand to hand action is on point. Panna was a true master at that. Very dynamic stuff, and Nantawooti Boonrapsap outperforms Chupong in that regard. 

The best fight in the whole movie is when the old Chinese Doctor beats up a bunch of henchmen. The henchmen walk into a dark room. The lights turn on, and the old man appears in the middle of them all, and proceeds to punch, kick and palm strike them all to unconsciousness. Save for one guy who runs away. Then the lights go out again, and the old man disappears. Like a kung fu Undertaker. That was awesome. 

Ok, now to the bad stuff. This movie is very fragmented. It doesn't make a lot of sense. A lot of character motivations are nonexistent and each character lacks depth. They're mostly a bunch of archetypes thrown together. The stoic hero, the damsel in distress, the arrogant villain, the valiant young hero, the badass femme fatale, the wise old Chinese kung fu doctor (seriously he is awesome, though). And all of this would be fine if we had any reason to care about these characters. None is given.

Also, the CGI. Oh my God the CGI. I know it's commonplace to complain about CGI in action movies, but this is about as bad as it gets. The fight scene inside the train, is really well done, including Boonrapsap using a chicken bone as a weapon to slice up henchmen. Great stuff. Then they go on top of the train. And the rest of this action sequence is green screened. All of it. It distracts from some of the great choreo and stunt work being done because it's so obvious no one is on a moving train. Thai cinema got attention from practical stunt work, so I have no idea why they do this. The scene gets dumber, when the train ends up colliding with a falling helicopter. There's more details as to why this is really dumb, but just know that it is. 

Did I mention, by the way, that The Chinese Doctor only speaks English the whole way through the film? He doesn't even speak Chinese, ever. He's a doctor living in Thailand who can't speak any Thai and only ever speaks English. It's ludicrous. 

I'm sure there were more dumb things but I can't remember them all. This movie reminded me of Furious 7 at times, and that's NOT what I want in my Thai action cinema. I would say skippable, but since it's Panna's last film...give it a shot.