SYNOPSIS:
Deu, a girl with equally high degree of recklessness and beauty has never experienced 'true love'. Her life changes completely when some gangsters try to kidnap her and she narrowly escapes with the help of Sanim, a sad looking stranger with a painful past. Waking up in an abandoned factory, she joins his friends who practice a form of drunken Thai break-dancing martial arts that they dub Meyraiyuth. Sanim and his friends, having had loved ones abducted, join forces to get back at the kidnappers.
MOVIE REVIEW:
The
release of "Chocolate" brought to us the attention
of one young plucky lady from Thailand – 'Jija' Yanin
Vismistananda. The new action heroine that could easily disabled
her opponents with her deadly kicks.
"Raging
Phoenix" marks the twenty-six-year-old second onscreen
debut and apparently it’s another effort by her production
company, Baa-Ram-Ewe to showcase her fighting abilities and
simultaneously broadening her acting skills. However, the
less than whelming script by director Rashane Limtrakul and
co-writer Sompope Vejchapipat contribute nothing substantial
but truckloads of unnecessary melodramatic effects in the
end.
The
story in fact started on a pretty right note. Yanin plays
Deu, a spoilt but neglected daughter of a single parent. Betrayed
by a two-timing boyfriend and intoxicated, she escaped being
kidnapped only when a stranger, Sanim (the Vietnamese-French
Kazu Patrick Tang) came to her rescue. It turns out that Sanim
and his friends have been tracking down this group of kidnappers
who took young girls away and turned them into prostitutes.
Sanim’s wife-to-be happened to be one of the victims
and ever since, Sanim has been indulging in grief and practice
a form of strange martial-arts that looks like a combination
of hip-hop dance steps and drunken fist-kung fu moves dubbed
Meyraiyuth in order to get his love one back from the ruthless
kidnappers.
One
can see the heartening attempts by the filmmakers to create
a more dimensional character for Yanin. Indeed Deu seems a
more developed character as compared to the autistic Zen in
"Chocolate". Yanin is given ample opportunities
here to showcase her acting range as Deu struggles to be empathized
and on the brink of despair from time to time. Then again,
"Raging Phoenix" is not the type of movie you should
be looking for in terms of award-winning performances thus
Rashane Limtrakul struggles to insert plenty of fighting sequences
(just in case you get bored) inbetween the various plotlines
to keep audience entertained. In addition, the origins of
the mixed-bag Meyraiyuth is not thoroughly explained either
and audience is left hanging as to how this form of martial-arts
came about.
Like
the heydays of Hong Kong action cinemas, "Raging Phoenix"
features a prolonged action finale that sadly overstayed its
welcome. Consisting of a mind-fuddling plot twist that involves
the concoction of perfume, a tiresome romance angle between
the leads and insipid sparring scenes, it’s quite an
anti-climax consider it has a promising setup and the cast
including Patrick Tang and of course Yanin impresses with
their agility and their b-boy breakdancing moves.
The
movie which carries a touted 60 million baht production budget
(double that of Ong Bak) according to producer Prachya Pinkaew
may impresses on first viewing the weird awkward combination
of dance moves and martial-arts and the occasional slow-mo
high flip and kicks, other than these it’s hard to justify
Yanin as a raging phoenix.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
NIL
AUDIO/VISUAL:
If half of the Singapore population understand or
speak Thai then it will be a logical choice to include Thai
as an option for the subtitles. But in this DVD, there’s
only an option between Chinese and Thai subtitles so if you
can’t understand both, I guess you won’t be picking
up this title anytime soon.
The
visual scores with its beautiful shots of the lush beaches
and oceanic sky and the audio provide a reasonably strong
bass accompanied by frequent loud hip-hop music.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Linus Tee
Posted on 25 January 2010
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