The Golden Triangle

                                          

Director: Wu Ma/ Rome Bunnag
Year: 1975
Rating: 4.5

This is a peculiar film that I came across. A poorly dubbed Thai-Hong Kong co-production with a few big names, but a messy outcome. Rome Bunnag, a Thai director known for his comedies teams up with the great Hong Kong actor/director Wu Ma to helm this. Most of the talent behind the camera is Thai and my guess is that Bunnag did most of the directing. In an intriguing credit, montage is given to Prince Chatrichalerm Yukol. The Prince is one of Thailand's most famous directors, partly for belonging to the Royal family but also for his epic historical films.



On the acting side, Hong Kong provides three from the Shaw Brothers though as best as I can tell, Shaw was not involved with the film. They are Lo Lieh, Tanny Tien and Tien Feng. Most of the other roles are played by Thais, but special attention has to go to the leading man played by Sombat Metanee. Sombat is likely the most famous actor in Thai history having been the leading man in over 600 films. He passed away a few years ago but even when he was older he was in films such as Tears of the Black Tiger and Bangkok Loco.



There are some interesting plot points here, but the execution is pretty bad. There are a lot of logic gaps and the action choreography is sloppy. For example, Lo Lieh is stopped by a blockade of about a dozen Thai cops. He gets up on top of the truck he is driving in full view and mows them all down without the cops getting off a shot. Thai cops don't have a great reputation, but come on. I expect the choreographer was not from Hong Kong but admittedly the final big shootout was better thanks to Lo Lieh. He is a Hong Kong drug smuggler who ends up in Tien Feng's gang in Burma.



Sombat is an undercover Thai cop who infiltrates the Burmese gang run by Tanny, looking gorgeous in her tribal outfits. She is the good drug smuggler, Tien and Lo Lieh are the villains. The film is sympathetic to the growers of the poppy, but sends a message how destructive they are. There was another Hong Kong film released with the same title in the same year starring Kurata Yasuaki.