Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Hanuman: White Monkey Warrior (2008)

My life has so far been great. It's been wonderful. I've seen so many wonderful, fun, entertaining and cool movies over the years. From all over the world. Thailand is a favorite movie-country of mine, and even though many movies are far from masterpieces they still have that naive charm, "it" you can call it. Today I lost my virginity to a mega-turd of a thai-movie: Hanuman: White Monkey Warrior. Obviously a try to cash-in on Tony Jaa/Panna Rittikrai/Prachya Pinkaew/any other talented personality from Thailand. And what a shitty movie this was.

Crap-actor Sornram Theppitak plays Yod, an ex-policeman that walks around doing nothing. He's in love with a woman who has some kind of home for... children/fat kids/retards/anyone that seem to be around in the countryside. But Yod is a troubled man. His father and family where killed by some evil foreigners and he wants revenge. He knows to much, of course, and the baddies wants to kill him... and yeah, I have no idea whats going on. They run a around a lot anyway. Fight a little bit. Bad digital explosions. More fight and the most funny scene I've seen in a long time, except it should be the opposite.

I don't know what to begin with. Director Sakchai Sribonnam clearly don't know what he's doing. I've never seen a movie with such a lack of energy as this one. Hello! Is there anybody out there? No one hears you because no one listen to each other, actors, camera crew, director, editor. Everybody made their own little shit-movie. Man, it's actually has some budget. Maybe more than the first Ong Bak! But where's the production value? The biggest location is also the best: a shoot-out on a freeway. It's okey, but I've seen better in PM Entertainment Groups movies. And they made twenty movies every year.

The actors are unbelievable bad. No, sorry. Two of the actors are unbelievable bad, and I'm afraid it's the hero and the main fighter-villian. Sornram Theppitak thinks he's in a thai daytime-soap and has watery eyes and half-open mouth in every scene without fighting. When it comes to the fights he can't fight at all and all the scenes where you see it's him he just runs around trying not to be kicked, and fuck yeah.. I could do it better! The rest is done with a mediocre stuntman, or at least with a mediocre choreographer. The bad guy has a tattoo and look that makes you want to hide your face of shame. I don't want to talk about it. Forget everything.

In he last twenty minutes we have some okey stuff, but it don't save the movie at all. There's a fight in some kind of illegal fighting club which has some nice moves and some good stunts. But not much at all. The final fight, in and outside a factory, is pure shit - but has two tasteless gore-scenes which don't fit into the rest of the movie. The most disturbing one is when our brave hero impales a bad guy with a iron rod through his ass and out from throat!

I will never see it again, but I will always remember once scene, more fun than the rest: twenty children (+ the "happy retard" and the "funny fat" kid) has died in a fire, Yod discovers this and try to wake these barbecued bodies with shaking them and screaming their names! One after another... and then there's an extra flashback together with each body that shows something funny/cute that the dead person did earlier in the movie. Yes, it's very, very, very funny. The burned bodies, not the flashbacks.

I'm not gonna say that you should avoid this movie, because that's just silly. Try it if you want to, but write a note before you kill yourself and let your family know that you did it on your on free will and that I can't be blamed for your death.

No comments: