Bangkok Dangerous (2008) More at IMDb Pro »

This is about an assassin called Joe who decides to end his career after his next trip abroad. The next trip is to (you'll never guess) Bangkok, where he has 4 people to kill, and he hires a young crook to work for him. However, Joe begins to break his own rules as he begins to see something of himself in the crook and falls in love with a deaf chemist.

I feel sorry for Nicolas Cage. He is possibly the biggest victim of typecasting in Hollywood, and he does his best with the roles he is given but the odd film slips through the net, and sadly Bangkok Dangerous is one of them. Nic is distinctly average in this and the performances of the supporting cast aren't much better with the notable exception of Charlie Yeung, who delivers a fine performance as the love interest.

This film isn't awful, it just suffers from an average and completely unoriginal script. This is Action Movie 101, and unlike some movies it doesn't get away with it by glossing over the cracks with special effects, like Wanted. Like Wanted, I successfully predicted the entire plot straight after Nic's opening monologue. Some scenes were very good, some very bad, the scale is balanced. The movie is like Marmite, you'll either love it or hate it.