Review: Little substance to stylish 'Bangkok Dangerous'

An old skit on "Saturday Night Live" had one of the players mimicking Michael Caine as he listened to his agent read the taglines of movie scripts sent to him for consideration. The joke was that before the agent could finish the tagline Caine would yell out "I'll do it!"

The joke doesn't really make sense now — unless we replace Michael Caine with Nicolas Cage. Another old SNL skit had Eddie Murphy's overexposed character Buckwheat assassinated. That's somewhat extreme, I know, but someone needs to get hold of Cage's career and apply some brakes.

"Bangkok Dangerous" is so shallow, unexplored, implausible and dreary that even it's cool style can't save it. And I can only guess that the cool style of the directors (the Pang brothers) is the only reason the film was made.

Cage (the star and producer), I can only imagine, saw in the Pang brothers a chance to make some coin ("coin," ain't I cool?). As I understand it, "Bangkok Dangerous," the American version, is an exact replica of the Thailand version made by the Pang brothers in 1999.

I guess Nicolas Cage figured he'd ride this fresh and new wave of Asian cinema to the bank. Well, I'm not one to give lessons on the subtle differences of Asian cinema — especially the hard-core action genre — but I'd hazard a guess that a 40-plus American actor would do better with the more accomplished directors Kar Wai Wong or Ang Lee.

Anyway, "Bangkok Dangerous" is about an assassin (Cage) flying into Bangkok to assassinate four people. We get to know his philosophy, his style and little else.

But that's OK because the film is just about the action. When it tries to do anything else (human interaction) it's stilted and immature.

In fact the storyline is more akin to an oversensitive college freshman writing his first short story or play. It's overdramatic, immature, derivative and wrought with angst.

But, you know, it's cool, it's new, it's got Nicolas Cage and $40 million behind. As they used to say, it's got a good beat and the kids will like it.