News

• Bangkok Dangerous
• Directed by Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang
• Written by Jason Richman, Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang
• Starring Nicolas Cage, Shahkrit Yamnarm, Charlie Yeung and Panward Hemmanee
• Classification: R
• Rating:

This could have been good. Long ago, before Nicolas Cage became synonymous with leaden action pictures, the star had fun doing Elvis Presley right. Cage didn't impersonate the courtly bore Elvis appeared to be in movies, but the sneering, guitar-humping hellcat The King was on record. His Elvis films include the aptly titled Wild at Heart and Honeymoon in Vegas. Scary proof of the actor's Elvis obsession: In 2002 he was briefly married to Lisa Marie Presley.

If Wild at Heart was Elvis just out of the army, racing like a lit fuse across America, Bangkok Dangerous is the morose Elvis we knew 15 years later. Cage's character, Joe, is a different kind of hit man, a contract killer stranded in Asia. Like Elvis near the end, he keeps awake practising martial arts and can only relax in a druggy haze. Joe is dead; he just hasn't fallen down yet. Cage's latest could be called Sick at Heart.

With Bangkok Dangerous, the Pang brothers remake their first film for a (presumably) wider audience. The Hong Kong twins remain close to the source material. Except in the 1999 original, Joe was deaf and mute; Cage narrates the new movie, employing the voice of a fatalistic noir tough guy. Instead, it is Joe's sweetie, an always smiling drug store attendant who is perpetually silent and, it turns out, impossible to hold.

The mirage girlfriend-pharmacist is a pretty good metaphor for drug addiction, and Bangkok Dangerous keeps us interested with its audacious sick Elvis premise for the first half hour or so. Joe chases down and dramatically rubs out a series of crime kingpins. Still, he seems progressively unhappier. Then we understand: It's himself he's looking to eliminate.

But then, just as the story gets interesting, comes a pile-up of dull scenes, including a sequence where Joe teaches his Thai accomplice how to fight - a martial arts sequence as silly as any Laurel and Hardy slap fight - and we begin to grow weary of the film's glum tone and hurried action scenes. Or maybe the final straw is Cage's unlikely raven-black action-movie wig, which looks like a CGI special effect and radiates a ghastly, oil-slick sheen. In any case, the point of Elvis was always being cool, hopping aboard a Mystery Train to destinations unknown, understanding full well that the thrill of the ride was everything.

Bangkok Dangerous doesn't work because it isn't much of a ride. The action scenes are strictly by rote. The incidental characters are all incidental.

Still, Cage is more interesting here than he has been in a while. The knock on Cage, by Sean Penn and others, is that, after winning a 1995 Academy Award for Leaving Las Vegas, he turned his back on Real Acting. That is not entirely true (and it should be said that watching Cage slum through the National Treasure series is preferable to shielding one's way past Penn's industrial-strength acting in All the King's Men or I Am Sam).

No, Cage has always been attracted to dark, difficult roles. Witness Lord of War, 8MM, and Bringing Out the Dead. His problem is that he has lousy taste in material. Near the end, that was Elvis's problem, too.