Nicolas Cage. We've seen him many times before, but not quite like this. This time, he's wearing much more leather, his hair is nearly shoulder length and he's more monosyllabic than ever before. He bursts into Bangkok"" with the lines, ""My name is Joe. This is what I do."" By 'this,' he means assassination.
Cage, hitman extraordinaire, has arrived in Bangkok to complete a series of killings, after which he intends to retire. All the killing is beginning to wear on him, however. It's affecting him on a deeper, more profound level now. Never mind that he can't express himself. No assassin can. He just looks off into the distance after his lines with a haunted look in his eye, brushes back his long black locks and sighs.
Cage's character opens the movie with straight narration: This is who I am and this is what I do. He's close to no one and he leaves no trace. These are the rules of being an assassin, he explains to the audience. It's a hard life, and Nicolas Cage plays the martyr. The problem is, no one feels bad for Joe, whose backstory is never revealed to the audience. No one knows how he became an assassin, or why. This makes him utterly dull as a character, failing to elicit any emotion. There's really just no reason to sympathize with him, outside of sympathy for how ridiculous he looks trying to be as badass as Samuel L. Jackson. So it goes that the main character and anti-hero of the film is impenetrable to both the supporting characters and, most importantly, the audience.
Over the course of the movie, Cage manages to acquire a loyal sidekick, Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm) and a love interest, Fon (Charlie Yeung), who is a deaf mute. Neither of these characters manages to raise the bar when it comes to intrigue. They certainly aren't getting feedback from Cage's character, though he is a teacher to Kong and lover to Fon. Fon already cannot communicate well, and Cage is limited by the assassin code of only speaking short lines, and never anything meaningful, so that relationship is doomed from the start.
Directed by the Pang Brothers and co-produced with Nicolas Cage, this dark action flick doesn't quite live up to the genre. Nicolas Cage no longer projects a badass persona, and the lame dialogue, coupled with those meaning-filled glances, happen all too often and are truly cringe-worthy.
What this movie has to offer is limited to a few chase scenes and some interesting cinematography of Bangkok.
Its major failing, then, is that it doesn't play to its strengths as an action film; make it about the action. Instead, it tries to take a deeper turn by making it about Cage's character, and it fails.
<*>Grade: CD</*>
