Scan and Pan
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Fah Talai Jone (Tears of the Black Tiger)
Dum, the son of a farmer, and Rumpoey, the daughter of the provincial governor, become friends as children. Many years later, they are reunited as college students and fall in love. When Dum returns home to find his father murdered, he delivers vengeance on his father's killers and is recruited into a gang of outlaws led by the notorious Fai. Dum and Rumpoey agree to meet each other at a remote spot they visited as children, but when Dun is late, Rumpoey thinks he's abandoned her and returns home to become engaged to a police captain working for her father. Her husband-to-be has orders to destroy Fai's gang, including his best gunman, the Black Tiger. Unknown to Rumpoey, Dum is the Black Tiger.
Writer/director Wisit Sasanatieng (writer of the Thai horror film, Nang Nak) has a great deal of affection for Thai westerns, action films, and melodramas of the 1960s and 70s. This film is both a homage to and a parody of those films--part romantic melodrama, part western, part ultraviolent action film. It succeeds with its hyperkinetic action scenes Quentin Tarantino would die for and a completely over-the-top camp sensibility (cowboys with bazookas? oh, yes!), but it turns deadly dull when it slows down to become a romantic melodrama. The film's two personalities co-exist uneasily and never manage to collaborate on forming a cohesive whole.
However, Sasanatieng has a great visual sensibility, and along with cinematographer Nattawut Kittikhun (Ong-Bak) and production designer Ek Iemchuen (Nang Nak), brings the story to life with vividly colorful lighting and sets that make it a richly visual cinematic experience. This is where the film succeeds most brilliantly, as an almost psychedelic film that recalls classic three-strip Technicolor films like 1939's The Wizard of Oz in its use of color.
Chartchai Ngamsan is just right as Dum, the stoic gunfighter in love with a high-born woman he's fated to never have. Italian model Stella Malucchi plays Rumpoey as a woman trapped by her station, who loses her one chance for freedom and achingly regrets it every second. Supakorn Kitsuwon is magnificently over the top as Mahesuan, Dum's sidekick, who is the best gunman in the gang before Dum arrives. He has a great evil laugh and he isn't afraid to use it. There's also far more passion in the homoerotic rivalry of Dum and Mahesuan than between Dum and Rumpoey. Sombat Metanee, who was a big star in the very films this one parodies, chews the scenery with much gusto as Fai. Arawat Ruangvuth is a bit stiff as the captain, but whenever the acting seems bad in the film, it's more by design rather than poor actors.
Perhaps this film plays better if you're more familiar with what it's a parody of or homage to, but to my eyes it's a very inconsistently entertaining film. When it's over the top, it works marvelously well; when it's not, it quickly becomes dull, with only the colorful sets and lighting to hold your interest. It's worth seeing just for those sets and lighting, though.
This Thai film from 2000 looks striking and is at times hilariously over the top, but not enough to make it a consistently entertaining film.
Dum, the son of a farmer, and Rumpoey, the daughter of the provincial governor, become friends as children. Many years later, they are reunited as college students and fall in love. When Dum returns home to find his father murdered, he delivers vengeance on his father's killers and is recruited into a gang of outlaws led by the notorious Fai. Dum and Rumpoey agree to meet each other at a remote spot they visited as children, but when Dun is late, Rumpoey thinks he's abandoned her and returns home to become engaged to a police captain working for her father. Her husband-to-be has orders to destroy Fai's gang, including his best gunman, the Black Tiger. Unknown to Rumpoey, Dum is the Black Tiger.
Writer/director Wisit Sasanatieng (writer of the Thai horror film, Nang Nak) has a great deal of affection for Thai westerns, action films, and melodramas of the 1960s and 70s. This film is both a homage to and a parody of those films--part romantic melodrama, part western, part ultraviolent action film. It succeeds with its hyperkinetic action scenes Quentin Tarantino would die for and a completely over-the-top camp sensibility (cowboys with bazookas? oh, yes!), but it turns deadly dull when it slows down to become a romantic melodrama. The film's two personalities co-exist uneasily and never manage to collaborate on forming a cohesive whole.
However, Sasanatieng has a great visual sensibility, and along with cinematographer Nattawut Kittikhun (Ong-Bak) and production designer Ek Iemchuen (Nang Nak), brings the story to life with vividly colorful lighting and sets that make it a richly visual cinematic experience. This is where the film succeeds most brilliantly, as an almost psychedelic film that recalls classic three-strip Technicolor films like 1939's The Wizard of Oz in its use of color.
Chartchai Ngamsan is just right as Dum, the stoic gunfighter in love with a high-born woman he's fated to never have. Italian model Stella Malucchi plays Rumpoey as a woman trapped by her station, who loses her one chance for freedom and achingly regrets it every second. Supakorn Kitsuwon is magnificently over the top as Mahesuan, Dum's sidekick, who is the best gunman in the gang before Dum arrives. He has a great evil laugh and he isn't afraid to use it. There's also far more passion in the homoerotic rivalry of Dum and Mahesuan than between Dum and Rumpoey. Sombat Metanee, who was a big star in the very films this one parodies, chews the scenery with much gusto as Fai. Arawat Ruangvuth is a bit stiff as the captain, but whenever the acting seems bad in the film, it's more by design rather than poor actors.
Perhaps this film plays better if you're more familiar with what it's a parody of or homage to, but to my eyes it's a very inconsistently entertaining film. When it's over the top, it works marvelously well; when it's not, it quickly becomes dull, with only the colorful sets and lighting to hold your interest. It's worth seeing just for those sets and lighting, though.
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