Bangkok Adrenaline Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		3.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		1.0

Bangkok Adrenaline Blu-ray Movie Review

Feel the rush…to get as far away from this movie as possible.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater December 31, 2010

I’ve seen more than my fair share of disappointing southeast Asian martial arts films in 2010, and Bangkok Adrenaline is probably the worst. Probably because, by this point, it’s getting hard to tell them apart. The film was written by Conan Stevens, a 7-foot-tall Aussie stuntman, erstwhile pro-wrestler, and one-time ballet dancer—no, really—who went to Thailand for a bit part in Power Kids, ended up staying in the country for good, and has since become a muscle-bound fixture of the Thai movie industry. According to his imdb.com page, Stevens devised the film with some of his ex-pat stuntmen pals so that they could showcase their skills, but if there’s one lesson to be learned from Bangkok Adrenaline, it’s that stunt performers should leave the writing to writers and the acting to actors. Are there some bang-up fight scenes here? Yeah, I guess. Are there some decent stunts? Sure. The question is, are you willing to sit through cringe-worthy acting and inept storytelling just to see some dressed-in-all-black thugs get their asses kicked? If all you want is empty action, it would seem to me like you’d be better off watching martial arts demos on YouTube. How this film got international distribution is beyond me.

Imagine, if you will, an extremely low-budget Guy Ritchie rip-off crossed with Ong Bak-on-Quaaludes and performed with acting worse than a junior high school production of Guys and Dolls. That, essentially, is Bangkok Adrenaline. The film starts with some terribly abrasive electro-metal screaming as we’re given an aerial tour of Thailand’s capital, but somehow it only gets even more grating from here on out.

We’re introduced to four foreigners—that is, whiteys—who have come to Thailand to party hard. Writer Conan Stevens plays a gentle giant named, no kidding, Conan, and Daniel O’Neill—a stuntman for films like Ultraviolet and The Medallion—is, yes, Dan, the pretty boy of the group. There’s also a dude with dreads—director Raimund Huber—who wears a Che Guevera shirt but looks like he probably doesn’t know who Che Guevera is, and another guy who, frankly, makes so little of an impression that I can’t really remember anything about him. They might be backpackers, but we also see them living in a fully furnished apartment later in the film, so who knows, maybe they live there. The script doesn’t pay enough attention to detail to make any of this clear. Anyway, after a wild night of stop-motion poker playing—the first attempt at injecting the movie with a dumbed down version of Guy Richie’s now-stale visual gimmickry—the four friends find themselves one million baht in debt to a Thai Mafioso who confiscates their passports and gives them one week to bring him the cash. Naturally, they do what anyone would—kidnap the daughter of a wealthy crooked businessman with legions of black-garbed, Muay Thai-expert thugs at his disposal and hold her for ransom.

But, see, the joke is on the bad guy, because our four ex-pat partiers are actually skilled fighters themselves! Well, one of the them is, at least. Daniel O’Neil has some serious martial arts chops—he left England at 19 and moved to Hong Kong to get into the kung fu flick business—but his compatriots can’t keep up. Conan just smashes things. Mr. Che Guevera Shirt is given a taser to make up for his lack of athletic prowess, and the other guy—well, once again, I can’t really recall him doing anything of interest in the film whatsoever. I think he may have been the “brains” of the outfit, but come on, that’s not really saying much here.

But yeah, Daniel O’Neil is definitely the highlight of Bangkok Adrenaline, and while it’s no saving grace, he does have a few impressive action/fighting/parkour sequences. You can expect lots of brawls in abandoned warehouses and much sprinting through crowded markets. I’m no expert, but his specialty seems to be spinning around really fast and kicking guys in the face. Occasionally, he does a back flip or vaults over an obstacle. Will you be impressed? I dunno, I guess it depends on how amped up you are on Mountain Dew whilst watching the film. I will say this: He looks like Frodo and he’s got a wicked six-pack, so if you’ve got a thing for ripped hobbits, well, you’re in luck.

For the rest of us, though, Bangkok Adrenaline—even at a slim 87 minutes—is a seemingly interminable exercise in brain-numbing stupidity. The movie just doesn't work on any level, not even in a “so bad it’s good” kind of way. It’s shot and edited like a homemade music video made by a bunch of meathead amateurs—see the scene in a nightclub that cuts, for no apparent reason, between a conversation and random close- up shots of women shaking their breasts and/or asses—and it confuses WTF-style moments for genuine comedy. There is, for instance, a mechanic shop run by a midget who drives a Mini-Cooper, and a French soldier with facial tattoos who brawls in a ring that looks exactly like Guile’s stage from Street Fighter II. Kooky! In once scene, Conan puts the kidnapped girl in the bathroom because she has to pee, but because he’s a total imbecile he forgets to untie her from her chair, forcing her to piss herself. Hilarious. My favorite moment, though, would have to be when Irene, the kidnapped girl—who looks a bit like a Thai Jessica Alba—slaps Dan across the face and says, “That’s for kidnapping me.” Then, she gives him a kiss on the cheek—yes, they’ve fallen in a kind of Stockholm Syndrome-ish love—and says, “That’s for kidnapping me too.” Cue the bow- chicka-bow-wow porn music and cut!

Bangkok Adrenaline Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shot with high definition video cameras, Bangkok Adrenaline arrives on Blu-ray with a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that's probably fairly true to source, but—and there's no nicer way to put this—does look quite cheap. As is the case with many low budget shot-on-video productions, there's a general flatness to the image. It's clear that color has been tweaked and toned in post-production in an attempt to give some pop to the picture, but the result is usually washed-out skin tones, garish hues, and poor white balance. Likewise, exposure sometimes runs much too hot—creating blown-out highlights— and black levels span the gamut between crushing, balanced, and grayish. Gauzy softness occasionally intrudes, but for most of the film, clarity is at least acceptable, if never wowing. I caught a few instances of mild banding and aliasing, along with some noisiness during the darker scenes, but nothing terribly distracting. Probably the best thing I can say about the transfer is that it could easily be worse.

Bangkok Adrenaline Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's predominantly English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track features a standard issue low-budget southeast Asian action mix. That is, lots of bad music blared extremely loudly, exaggerated punch/kick sounds, and little else. You'll notice some quite ambience at times—like crickets or thumping music in the club—but by and large the rear channels are only used sparingly. And that's fine, if a bit bland. The real trouble here is that there are all sorts of issues with the dialogue. The most common problem is that the vocals are buried under other elements of the mix, taking on a muddy, hard-to-discern quality. Elsewhere, you'll hear muffled dialogue that's much too bass-heavy, and even a few instances of crackling in the recordings. It never gets to the point of complete unintelligibility, but after the first few scenes, I turned on the subtitles just so I wouldn't have to constantly bother trying to parse out what the characters were saying. For reference, English subtitles are hardcoded in the video whenever characters are speaking in Thai, but for the remainder, English SDH and Spanish subs are optional.

Bangkok Adrenaline Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The lone bonus feature on the disc is a compilation of standard definition behind-the-scenes material that runs for a whopping fifty-seven minutes. Don't expect to be informed or entertained, though. This is raw on-set footage—no interviews, no narration, nothing.

Bangkok Adrenaline Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Bangkok Adrenaline is yet another southeast Asian beat'em up that offers a few good fight scenes but little else. In this case, by "little else" I mean some of the worst acting perhaps ever committed to film—well, video—and a girl with her mouth duct taped shut, peeing herself while tied to a chair. I just don't see the allure, although I'm sure there's someone out there with a sick bondage/urination fetish. It's probably the same guy that likes ripped hobbits.