Category Archives: Crime film

Red Eagle Review

Posted on October 24, 2010 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

My earlier post on Wisit Sasanatieng’s rebooting of the cult Thai super hero Red Eagle (Insee Daeng) generated a fair bit of interest. The film opened in Thailand earlier this month to rave reviews and is generating a lot of buzz internationally.

According one of my favourite film sites, Wise Kwai’s Thai Film Journal, Red Eagle is “Perhaps the most Hollywood-like movie yet made by the Thai film industry, a big, loud and brash superhero action flick that is mostly relentless in its pace and hyper-stylized violence”.

“Fans hoping for the colorful camp and dry wit of Wisit’s previous films like Tears of the Black Tiger and Citizen Dog might come away disappointed with the director’s latest effort.”

Those wanting a big budget Thai action movie that makes the most of the metropolis of Bangkok as a backdrop will not be.

The film is based on the 1960s action franchise that starred the legendary Mitr Chaibancha, which was originally based on a series of crime novels by writer Sake Dusit.

Lao-Australian actor Ananda Everingham portrays “a much darker and brooding character. Instead of the fun-loving drunken playboy lawyer that was Mitr’s alter ego, this Rome Rittikrai is an angry loner – a former special forces operative who was betrayed on the battlefield.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction and film from Thailand, Crime film

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Matt Dillon’s City of Ghosts: film as a time machine

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Andrew Nette| 6 Comments

GhostRe-watching City of Ghosts, Matt Dillon’s 2002 crime movie set in Cambodia, has got me thinking a lot about film as a personal time machine.

It’s not a great film, but having worked on and off as a journalist in Phnom Penh in the nineties and again in 2008, for me it’s a vivid depiction of a Cambodia that is quickly changing in the face of rapid, if very uneven, economic development.

Jimmy (Dillon) is a long con artist who begins to grow a conscience after the fake insurance company he’s been fronting forfeits on claims to the survivors of a hurricane. In order to get his share of the proceeds from the scam and escape the clutches of the FBI, Jimmy travels from New York to Thailand where Marvin (James Caan), his mentor and the brains behind their operation has fled.

Landing in Bangkok, Jimmy meets up with another of Marvin’s associates, Casper (Stellan Skarsgard), who informs him Marvin has gone to Cambodia to escape his former partners in the Russian mob who unbeknown to Jimmy put up the seed money for their insurance scam.

Jimmy decides to follow him, arranging to meet up with Casper in Phnom Penh at a hotel called the Belleville. Most frequent travellers to Asia will have stayed in at least one place like the Belleville, a magnet for dead-beat expats, burn-outs and tourists on expired visas, who hang around the bar providing cryptic advice and Vietnam flashbacks to whoever will pay attention and buy them drinks.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction and film from Cambodia, Crime film

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The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Posted on October 3, 2010 by Andrew Nette| 6 Comments

The Friends of Eddie CoyleOf the crime films coming out of the United States in the early seventies, it’s hard to think of one that’s tougher and grittier than the 1973 neo-noir, The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

Set in Boston’s criminal milieu, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a no frills depiction of desperate men doing whatever they have to do to stay one step ahead of each other and the law.

And none of them is more desperate than Eddie ‘Fingers’ Coyle (Robert Mitchum). A 51 year-old ex-con, a gun runner and Christ knows what else in his criminal career, Coyle’s got a wife, three kids and the prospect of a three to five-year jail stretch for being caught driving a truckload of stolen whisky.

We first glimpse Coyle getting his coffee and slice of pie in an all night diner before sitting down to talk business with the young Turk, Jackie Brown (Steven Keats), from who he gets his merchandise.

The punk gives him lip and Coyle has to set him straight with the story about how he got his nickname and an extra set of knuckles on one hand, courtesy of a gun deal gone wrong.

“You can’t trace these guns, I guarantee that,” whines Brown.

“You better, or neither of us will be able to shake hands,” deadpans Coyle.… Read more

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Posted in 1970s American crime films, Crime fiction, Crime film, George V Higgins, Heist films, Neo Noir, Peter Boyle, Robert Mitchum

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Return of the Red Eagle

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

On October 7, Thailand will finally get to see Wisit Sasanatieng’s take on the classic Thai super hero series from the 1950s and 1960s, Insee Daeng or Red Eagle.

Red Eagle has been the focus of huge anticipation ever since Wisit (best known in the West for his homage to the Thai action films of the fifties and sixties, Tears of the Black Tiger) announced the remake.

After three years of political uncertainty, culminating several months ago in pitched street battles in the Bangkok between the military and  red shirt protesters loyal to the ousted PM Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand needs a hero and the Red Eagle might just fit the bill.

Trailers for the remake floating around the web for a while now. I found the latest, complete with English language sub-titles, on one of my favourite blogs, Wise Kwai’s Thai Film Journal, and it’s an absolute knock out. Wisit’s updated Red Eagle in his leather jacket and red face mask looks great. Bangkok is perfect as the ominous and chaotic metropolis in which the story  is set (not that big a stretch when you think about it). There are heaps of stunts and  John Woo style action, complete with the slow motion work Thai film makers seem to be so fond of.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction and film from Thailand, Crime film

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Young and dangerous: two Thai crime films

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

The only notable feature about the 2008 Nicholas Cage movie Bangkok Dangerous, was its success in achieving something I didn’t think was possible – it made the Thai capital of ten million look boring. Bangkok is many things: hot, polluted, crowded, exotic, infuriating, exhausting. But it is never boring.

What possessed the film’s directors, Oxide and Danny Pang, to reprise their 1999 Thai language movie hit of the same name is unclear, although after ten years of in Thailand and Hong Kong, the lure of Hollywood and money probably had something to do with it.

The original Bangkok Dangerous combined taunt story telling with stylish visuals. It also made the most of Bangkok as a setting, a world of neon lit go-go bars, dingy apartments and back alleys constantly humming with the drone of traffic and the two-stroke motorcycles that are the preferred mode of transport for much of the populace.

The film’s breakneck pace is set in the very first scene, when grainy footage from an askew security camera in an anonymous toilet block captures the first killing. Within seconds we are introduced to the main character, the assassin Kong, wandering along a nightclub strip to a bar where he receives instructions about his next job from one of the hostesses, a dissolute Aom.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction and film from Thailand, Crime film

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