Is Bangkok Dangerous Just Hitman All Over Again?

The Seduction: Hitman, the Trailer
Agent 47, a genetically engineered global assassin, is caught in an intricate web of good and evil. His very existence is a sin. Or is he a "necessary evil"? It's a smooth-talking trailer saturated with color and a rich tapestry of religious Da Vinci Code-like mystery; Bourne Supremacy-style betrayal; and bald, bar-coded, Minority Report-esque science fiction and political intrigue. It's lethal grace and operatic destruction. A film with the soul of an aria and the hotness of a pouty-lipped Russian beauty in a sultry scarlet dress -- and a whole lotta big shiny black guns. It will melt your action-movie heart.

The Movie After: Hitman
Excessive violence, very unsecret-looking secret agent (Agency hairdresser: "Do you think anyone will notice the barcode?" Nah...), awkward lack of character dimension, senseless plot, hollow, hollow dialogue -- was the beloved PlayStation 2 Hitman more convincing? No opera, just the uninspiring muzak of a Casio keyboard assassin-samba. Hitman, I thought I KNEW you. I saw your trailer but now ... I don't know ... WHO ARE YOU???? (insert tone of disgust and disbelief)

The Seduction: Bangkok Dangerous, the Trailer
Joe -- an anonymous, lone-wolf international assassin who lives out of his suitcase -- is betrayed by his bottom-feeding big-money clients. He never makes killing personal and doesn't "take an interest in people outside of work," i.e., people he's not killing. It's never personal. He's much grittier than Hitman, with less surreal elegance and more hair. He questions his isolated existence and is drawn into an uncalculated romance. And so far as we know, no sinisterly futuristic bar code birth mark. So familiar ... yet different.

The Movie After: Bangkok Dangerous
Should I do it? I don't know. Should I take the trailer up on its movie date? Should I go? Am I stuck in a self-destructive pattern of trusting the wrong trailers? The comedy trailers that charmed with humor that was sadly absent in the feature film. The hair-raising horror trailers that later lacked big-screen spontaneity. The mystery movie trailers with promisingly packaged plots that revealed themselves as sloppy storylines in reel life. How can a movie watcher ever trust again? Especially when some trailers are directed by someone other than the film director. And what does it mean when the trailer director did a better job? Admittedly, trailers were made to seduce. Which isn't too hard when you only have to seem to be a hunk of sexy assassin-movie love for two minutes.

Still, Bangkok Dangerous is its own movie. It's not The Professional, You Kill Me or of course Hitman. It stars Hollywood heavyweight Nicholas Cage. It was spawned not from the geek genius of PlayStation game designers but rather the Thai directing duo Danny and Oxide Pang, as a remade-for-America version of their Thai original of the same name. (Among the brothers' other well-known work is the Asian horror hit The Eye.) And dare I generalize, Asian directors know their action films, right? In the Thai Bangkok Dangerous Joe was mute. They had to give Cage something to say -- perhaps that will prove to be an improvement, perhaps not. Also, in its favor, the new Oxide flick is set in the intoxicating maze of Bangkok.

And its trailer is less like a handsomely hypnotic Hitman that leaves you dizzy and disoriented -- like it just slipped something in your drink -- and more like an intense, moody, complicated and morally troubled mercenary. It could still break a girl's heart, though. I'll never learn ...

Editor's Note: We'll have a full review of Bangkok Dangerous later this afternoon. They've tried to hide it from Film.com but we're paying cash money to see it. For you. We give and we give.

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