Bangkok Dangerous

Just when you thought you could safely put hitman movies behind you, along comes a left-field film that completely refreshes the genre. The Pang Brothers are both Chinese back-room boys in the film industry, Oxide working in Bangkok and Danny in Hong Kong. Oxide has directed once before, but this is their first collaboration – and they’re not far behind the Wachowski Brothers when it comes to their way with CGI.Protagonist is a deaf-mute hitman who works principally in Bangkok, where one of his jobs closely resembles a real-life assassination of a few years back. A home-movie-style flashback shows how he lost his hearing in a childhood fight. Between jobs, he nervously dates the kindly girl from the chemist’s shop who gives him the painkillers he needs, but she understandably withdraws when she finds out what he does. His fate, of course, is preordained, but the directors steer him towards it through largely wordless sequences of quite dazzling visual invention. Two standout sequences seem assured of a place in genre history: one on a Hong-Kong subway train, the other in a Japanese restaurant in Bangkok where he’s accompanied by the ghost of his late best friend. Entire reels go by without dialogue, and the hitman is happiest when he takes his girlfriend to see a silent comedy. Really impressive. (Tony Rayns)