One day, Thee's uncle catches him looking through confidential documents that had been locked away. Thee had disobeyed his uncle and was looking for clues as to how his parents had died. His uncle throws him out and Thee heads to the big city to continue his investigations.
Thee hooks up with one of his father's old colleagues and becomes a freelance assassin. One day, he is hired to kill Ploy (Nisachon Tuamsungnoen), the daughter of a powerful man.
He decides to not kill her, which is fortunate because he was being set up for her murder. Ploy and Thee go on the run, pursued by various hired killers including femme fatale Nui (Kessarin Ektawatkul).
Nui seriously injures Thee in a fight. Ploy takes him to her family doctor (Ooi Teik Huat) and then back to his uncle to recuperate. The bad guys track them down and Thee's brother and uncle are now drawn into the fight.
***
Like too many martial arts movies, Vengeance of an Assassin is all fight and no sense. I'm not going to give a movie a pass just because it's Asian (Thai, in this case). If it stinks, it stinks.
Sure, there are lots of fights, most of them pretty good. And sure, I'm not expecting much of a story, even though one would be good. What pisses me off about Vengeance is the stupid, cliched, melodramatic story.
If you want to make a fight movie, go ahead. Lay on some simple, stupid story as an excuse to string fights together. I won't complain too much. But make me suffer through some melodramatic nonsense? I didn't sign up for a Korean drama.
The brothers' arguments with their uncle are overwrought. We don't really know who they are - the characters don't get much introduction - and are forced to watch virtual strangers squabble. It makes you uncomfortable. And for no reason - there's no message, no moral. It's just an excuse to set up some fights.
I know a guy who writes scripts for short films. When he needs some drama, his immediate reaction is to throw in some hard luck story - the character is dying of cancer or something. For martial arts movies, the cliched trope is vengeance for a murdered family member. That's lazy and boring. We've seen it before.
Then Thee suddenly becomes a cold-blooded killer-for-hire? And skilled too? Where did he learn to fight and shoot? His brother learns from watching his uncle's VHS videotapes (which look like terrorist training videos). Maybe Thee did too. Only you can't learn how to fight and shoot just from watching TV.
Okay, enough about the story. The fights are good. A nice blend of realism and too-fancy-to-be-true athleticism and no obvious wire work. The Shaolin Soccer fantasy football match at the start is especially fun.
But keep it short, guys. Look at Kick-Ass. Heck, look at Jurassic Park. There are only 14 minutes of dinosaur special effects in Jurassic Park, but look at their impact. Less is more. Trust me, don't trust the Hong Kong guys.
There's a fancy long-take (no cuts) fight sequence that is shot entirely from knee level, I kid you not. Why knee level? It's just the director showing off how creative he is (my apologies to the late Panna Rittikrai). The problem with this is that it distracts the audience, throws them out of the movie. You don't want the audience to think, Wow isn't the director good? You want them to think, Wow isn't the hero awesome? Of course I was thinking, What a showoff asshole the director is.
The Thai martial artists and stuntmen are good. They deserve better scripts than this.
Bonus gripes:
- You do not survive a metal pipe through your stomach without immediate hospital care, let alone recover enough to fight within a day or two.
- Twisted train tracks will not launch a speeding train into the air. The train fill flatten the tracks.
- If you shoot someone with a rifle at close range (maybe 20 meters), the bullet will go through him and kill the pretty girl behind him.
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