‘Bangkok Dangerous’ Sucks. How ‘Bout That?

The Coen Bros. stepped away from this one just in time.

Slow news day. Like Monday itself, the view of Tinseltown from here is drab, bland and boring. Just the same and a lot more of it. In keeping with this, we thought we’d bring you a very surprising development in the world of cinema.

Bangkok Dangerous, Nick Cage’s latest phone-it-in-release directed by the Pang bros. sucks! Who knew? Well, we did, of course.Some highlights via the tried and true Rotten Tomatoes:

Anthony Lane of The New Yorker gives the film no mercy, as is his usual. And we like his usual:

The Cage of ‘Wild at Heart’ and ‘Leaving Las Vegas’ found life to be engrossingly weird, and treated it accordingly, whereas the Cage of ‘Bangkok Dangerous’ intones a line like ‘There’s a beer in the refrigerator’ as if he were reading from the Book of Micah. He appears sunken throughout, understandably depressed by his long, ropy mane of black hair; from a certain angle he’s a ringer for Chrissie Hynde, of the Pretenders. Only once does the Cage of yore flicker into view.

Cage has been phoning it in for so long now, we’d be surprised if even he knew he was doing it. Clearly his directors are sleeping at the helm. Or, worse, they’re seeing what he’s doing as worthwhile.

Rafer Guzman of Newsday.com chimes in with the film in the sights as well,

Directed by the Hong Kong brothers Danny and Oxide Pang (‘The Eye’) and based on the 1999 Thai film of the same name, ‘Bangkok Dangerous’ pretends to have a lot on its mind. It moves slow as molasses and has the same general coloring. The muddled action sequences inch forward through pitch-black warehouses, murky swimming pools and other shadowy interiors while Cage wears an expression of stone.

It’s never clear why Joe takes Kong under his wing or, conversely, why a proper, attractive Thai girl would date an American whose hair is so bizarre. As for the underlying morality of the whole concept — what kind of person takes contract-killing lessons? — ‘Bangkok Dangerous’ decides that problem is too dangerous to mess with.

So there you have it. In perhaps one of the most boring, dull posts we’ve ever done, we let you know that Bangkok Dangerous does, in fact, suck. God, here’s hoping film news picks up a little this week or we’ll have to resort to something as asinine as telling you that The House Bunny also sucks (not an innuendo).