A man arrives at the airport in Bangkok, gets a gun, hires a young female taxi driver, and people with no obvious connection between them start dropping one by one.
One Night in Bangkok is more or less what you expect it to be. Producer/writer/director Wych Kaosayananda builds up the narrative slowly enough for the audience to get to know Kai and Fha to justify the film’s denouement. The editing’s rhythm and pace harmonise the film, but quite early into the film, one can realise that Kaosayananda doesn’t want to get rid of anything he has shot. And that becomes quite problematic. There is too much dialogue that could have been avoided, firstly, to tighten the script and reduce the film’s duration, and secondly, to edit out everything that the audience would have understood without the heroes and villains saying it. The latter is a greater issue simply because I felt I didn’t get enough credits as a viewer. I truly believe that about twenty minutes could have been cut out, leaving much to the audience’s imagination and also focusing on the action.
The action is another issue that could have been done better, too. By now, we have seen action films in the last couple of decades that are equivalent to a cinematic miracle. Prachya Pinkaew and Gareth Evans have offered us Thai and Indonesian productions that have left us gobsmacked. Ever since action sequences have evolved and raised the bar sky-high. Going back to mediocre action scenes, especially starring Mark Dacascos, an avid martial artist who comes from a family of martial artists, lowers the expectations and generates mediocre reviews. Shame really.
Dacascos is a good actor, and I really hope that, even now that he is nearing 60, he can still impress us with something better written, directed, and produced. Lastly, Vanida Golten, who appears for the first time in a film, does a magnificent job. Let’s hope that we see her in more projects.
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Solidarity for all the innocent lives who suffer the atrocities of war!
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