DVD Sunday: Bangkok Dangerous
By Morgan Short, Nov 16th, 2008 | In Community
An open letter to the directors, wardrobe stylists, Nicholas Cage himself, and anyone else who might be working on a Nicholas Cage movie in the future:
Nicholas Cage's head is not some magical tableau rosa onto which you can affix any hairstyle under the sun. On the contrary, very few hairstyles look like they actually belong on Nicholas Cage's head, and therefore his scalp should not be treated like some sort of wondrous blank canvas onto which one is compelled to create their wildest hair fantasies.
In Bangkok Dangerous, Nicholas Cage is literally wearing the exact same hair that John Travolta wore in Pulp Fiction, and the way he's got it attached to himself, it looks like said hair had hitherto been residing and the back of Travolta's closet lo these many years, perhaps even crimped a bit from being stored under the angel wings that Travolta donned in the movie Michael.
Nicholas Cage's hair is the physical embodiment of a trend that can be traced into the script, plot, and action sequences of Bangkok Dangerous: it's all been done before. Nicholas Cage plays "Joe" a hitman in a standard hitman-faces-morality-crisis movie. This morality crisis arises when Joe falls in love with a girl who is -- and I shit you not -- a deaf Thai pharmacist. And so Bangkok Dangerous is Joe in Bangkok doing "one last job" before getting out of the biz. Oh, and he has an apprentice who he is teaching how to be a hitman as well because all hitman movies have these apprentice characters in them.
Basically it's one of those movies that has Cage doing a serious voice over, listing the rules of being a hitman (they're things like, "Rule number 3: Know when it's time to get out" whoooaa!) and then the movie is him breaking all these rules when things are complicated by his love for the deaf Thai pharmacist. In terms of performance, Cage turns in something between brooding time bomb and wearied philosopher, which is to say a little Cage a la Con Air intermixed with a hint of Ghost Rider against a backdrop of Asian action movie melodrama.
And that's about it really. I just finished watching it and don't really remember anything about it. Other than the fact that it was in Thailand and all the color seemed off somehow. And that Cage looks mopey and rained on the whole time.
Anyways I'm done with this review. I think I spent more time on Bangkok Dangerous than Cage did. He literally has ten movies coming out in 2009. TEN.
Grade: D.
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