Crime Kings

Clearly prompted by the huge success of Dang Bireley's (see there), this highly entertaining movie offers another macho-Éromantic biography of a real-life outlaw. Sua Bai was Lopburi's answer to Robin Hood in the lawless days after the Japanese retreat in 1945: a bandit who stole from the rich and corrupt and shared the proceeds with the villagers who sheltered him. The film centres on the relationship between the bandit and his nemesis, Police Captain Ying, who eventually drove him out of Lopburi and into hiding on a rubber plantation in the south. But Thanit obviously sees the film more as a western than as a cops-and-robbers thriller; generously budgeted, it has the sweep and exhilaration of a Leone movie. But the tone remains distinctively Thai, underlined by the casting of ineffably glamorous actors for the three male leads and by the appearances of countless politicians, artists and celebrities in cameo roles. (T.R.)