Critic Reviews

Bangkok won't be making any appearances at the Oscars, but it is executed with skill and -- a severed limb or two notwithstanding -- without too much bloody excess.

Without the technical nastiness and fatal realism that made the initial film so compelling, the remake feels like a hollow excuse to present the myriad ways in which a bullet can pierce a cranium, rather than an edgy portrait of Third World violence.

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

Parts of Bangkok Dangerous, far from seeming unfamiliar or freshly stylized, offer nothing that you couldn't catch in an episode of "CSI."

Pretty much all the things that made the original so original are filtered out of this un-original.

I didn't hate this film. I didn't find it to be a waste of time or brain waves. Given the reasons I saw the film, I suppose I'm 50% disappointed.

While the film includes several exciting, creatively shot action scenes, the drama is otherwise so shopworn that the violent climax is a relief.

Of all the shoddy, insipid qualities of Bangkok Dangerous, the most egregious is the most fundamental: The film is simply dreadful to look at.

I'm beginning to suspect there's some sort of ancient, or at least post-Pearl Harbor, curse in play that stops genre-oriented Asian filmmakers from creating anything of all but the most negligible merit once they hit the California shore.

Dimly lit, emotionally empty, and devoid of thrills, Bangkok Dangerous should disappoint Cage fans looking for Wicker Man-style camp thrills just as thoroughly as action buffs looking for a passable thriller. It's never close to good, and it can't even get bad right.