Bangkok Dangerous (2008) - The Pang brothers drop Cage in a rickety remake

♥♥

+ Worst Poster of the Year

If you look at this poster for the Pang brothers' Bangkok Dangerous and wonder; one of Nicholas Cage's seems to be holding a gun that is missing, and the other is bizarrely creeping into his jacket, apparently going for his opposite armpit, - you are not alone. The poster ranks as one the all-time strangest and worst cases of poster graphics foul-up

Our mostly silent hitman hero Joe has some disciplinary rules set for his work, but now as he finds himself in Bangkok, Thailand, he breaks these rules as he carries out jobs.

Bangkok Dangerous is a remake of Bangkok Dangerous (1999), written by Jason Richman (Swing Vote (2008)) and directed by brothers Danny and Oxide Chun Pang (Out of Inferno/Tao Chu Sheng Tian (2013), both), who are remaking their own first film.
The Pang brothers have an unmistakable knack for staging exciting action scenes, - in particular the boat scenes are good here, - but the film's plot does not match this quality. Nicolas Cage's (National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)) romantic scenes with Joe's deaf-mute love interest Fon (played by Charlie Yeung (Sleepwalker/Meng You (2011)) are actually touching and fine, - but they seem like they arrive from out of another film.
Bangkok Dangerous has real Thai flavors, - but it is also undeniably a plate of simplistic action romance nonsense. SPOILER It ends unusually, as Cage blows his own brains out!

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2008 in films - according to Film Excess
The Eye 2/見鬼2/Gin3 Gwai2 2 (2004) or, Women: Screaming and Crying

Watch some interesting behind-the-scenes footage from the film's Bangkok shoot here

Cost: 45 mil. $
Box office: 42.4 mil. $
= Huge flop
[Bangkok Dangerous premiered 22 August (Spain) and runs 100 minutes. Cage's production company Saturn Films had purchased the remake rights to the original film. The original's mute hero was changed for "a marketing point of view", Oxide Pang has explained, and the deaf-mute love interest was created instead. Shooting took place in Thailand, including in Bangkok, and in Prague, the Czech Republic from August 2006 - ?, making the film's post production period suspiciously long. The film opened #1 to a 7.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, the lowest #1 first weekend gross there since David Spade-comedy Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star (2003). It fell out of the top 5 in its second week and grossed a weak 15.2 mil. $ (35.8 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Russia and Spain, each with 3.6 mil. $ (8.5 %). The home video release earned in excess of 15 mil. $ in North America, which, if added into the theatrical gross, would only change the film's status to that of 'big flop'. The Pang brothers returned solo in their native Hong Kong; Danny Pang with Seven 2 One (2009), Oxide Chun Pang with Basic Love (2009). Cage returned in Knowing (2009). Bangkok Dangerous is rotten at 8 % with a 3.4/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Bangkok Dangerous?

The Eye 2/見鬼2/Gin3 Gwai2 2 (2004) or, Women: Screaming and Crying

[ZERO]

+ 2nd Worst Movie of the Year

A lady in a blood-soaked hospital dress dragging herself across the floor makes up this poster for The Pang Brothers' The Eye 2

A young, pregnant woman attempts suicide numerous times, because she is heavily plagued by some spirits that she sees regularly.

The Eye 2 is the sequel to Danny and Oxide Pang, 'The Pang Brothers'' 2002 horror The Eye, written by Yuet-Jan Hui (The Eye) with Lawrence Cheng (Encore/Hot Choi (1980)) contributing story elements. This film is often involuntarily comical, and just as you think it cannot possibly deliver any more baloney, it brings you another head-shaking, laugh-inducing sequence. - However, it doesn't give enough fun to win a single heart here and unquestionably belongs in the exclusive grade-zero club of films wholly without merit.
When I was almost sure that The Eye 2 was just about over, it turned out it had another full 35 minutes of absurd nonsense left for me. The hands-down most annoying (but also a bit comical) feature of the film is that all of its women are struck dumb in a kind of impotent state throughout, which leaves them to only react to bad stuff with screaming, crying or - and this is also often the case, - screaming and crying. These emotional bouts are pretty much non-stop throughout the movie. The protagonist, - the only character we really meet, - is the prototype for this seemingly unthinking, eternally sobbing blob of a gender that women are made out to be in The Eye 2.
There are semi-religious elements, such as the heroine wanting to give birth to a reincarnated version of her boyfriend's deceased mother, and ridiculously humorous inventions, such as ghosts flying into the vaginas of women giving birth, (while, of course, they are screaming and crying loudly), - and some of the consistently poor taste of the film may have some cultural motivations lying behind it that I fail to grasp, (it's a Hong Kong/Singapore co-production.)
What is assured absolutely above any cultural differences is that the script, acting, directing and photography here seem like they are taken out of an early film school production. The music sounds like it comes from a bad reality TV show, and the film's shifts in tone are jarring; the editing is choppy, and the general experience seems like just a string of sequences playing one after the other without any sense of a central order of things. The grasp on suspense here is absent and deeply amateurish. The Eye 2 is all bad.

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The Eye US remake: The Eye (2008) - French talents Moreau/Palud fail in Hollywood with Asian horror remake

Here is a French trailer for the original The Eye

Cost: Estimated 2.3 mil. $
Box office: In excess of 2.5 mil. $
= Uncertain
[The Eye 2 was released 18 March (Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand) and runs 95 minutes. The storyline is not related to that of The Eye, only in that it again is about clairvoyance and the ability to see ghosts. Shooting took place in Singapore, Bangkok, Thailand and in Hong Kong. The film was not released theatrically in North America. The gross listed above of 2.5 mil. $ is the cume of the only three markets that are made public, (Hong Kong, Italy and Thailand), of which Hong Kong makes up the biggest part with 1.2 mil. $. But the film was released in 13 other markets and 3 festivals, so this is not a complete gross. The Eye 3 (2005) takes the franchise in a horror-comedy direction, again made by The Pang Brothers. The Eye (2008) is a bad US remake with Jessica Alba. Danny Pang returned with Leave Me Alone/Ah Ma Yau Nan (2004) and Oxide Pang with Ab-normal Beauty/Sei Mong Se Jun (2004). 8,648 users at Rotten Tomatoes have given The Eye 2 a 3.2/5 rating.]

What do you think of The Eye 2?