Goodman Town
Reviewed by Simon Booth
Director: ?
Stars: Watchara TungkaPrasert, Archariya BuaSuwan.
Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
Year: 2002
Ouch... my brain hurts. Why?
Because I've just watched Goodman Town, and tried my level best to follow
the plot... no easy task! To call it "convoluted" would be kind - messy"
would be more fair, I think. If you're planning to watch it, I'd recommend
reading this synopsis first to prepare:
The year is future, and the time is post apocalypse. The world has
been reduced to Mad Max style banditry and rule of the gun, with the remaining
population gathered together in small groups and dressed in "out of the garbage
can" fashions. One place that's relatively thrived is Goodman Town...
that is, until bandit Tiger Yai takes over the town and displaces the population.
The refugees set up Dark Commune, and seek to reclaim
Goodman Town as their own. They hatch a plan
to tunnel under the town, but it will take them some time. To buy time,
they send a fortuneteller to Tiger Yai and tell him he must marry in 4 days
or die. Tiger Yai buys this story and sends his men off to find his
wife - who can be identified by a birthmark on her chest.
Meanwhile, a famous hero called Mr. Climax has been wandering around amnesiac
since he was betrayed by 4 famous killers, quite having forgotten what his
wife looks like. In fact, his wife looks exactly like the daughter of
the chief of Dark Commune (it took me an hour to figure this crucial plot
point out, and realise the very cute actress was playing two characters).
And, as luck would have it, she's the one that Tiger Yai has to find and marry.
That should be enough to make sense of most
of what happens, if and when it's supposed to make sense... and that's certainly
not all the time, because Goodman Town is a very *silly* movie. It's
an Action Comedy (it says so on the DVD case, so I know), featuring some really
silly and often dumb comedy... lots of slapstick and goofiness.
It's vaguely reminiscent of pBob - Body Jumper's puerile humour, but not quite
as genuinely funny - or maybe it lost more in the translation?
Actually it probably lost a lot because of the terrible acting displayed by
most of the cast :)
So it probably sounds like I didn't enjoy the film... not so, in fact :)
Although it has several gaping flaws, it's quite entertaining and fun to watch.
The characters are colourful, and the apocalyptic world quite well conveyed
in a low-budget way. Also, the film is very stylishly filmed and edited
- I'm guessing the director probably has a music video background, given
the relative measures of style versus narrative coherency. There's
some really nice camera work, and in particular there's some stylishly filmed
action. The film definitely fits the "Action Comedy" description on
the box, as it's relatively chock full of cool action scenes.
There's lots of gunplay, some huge explosions
and a fair amount of cool posing. The largest portion of this comes
in the finale, naturally, which runs a good 20 minutes or so and features
more bullets and explosions than most of John Woo's career. Technically,
the lack of experience of both cast and crew is evident - but so is their
enthusiasm, and certainly no effort was spared in bringing some classy carnage
to the screen.
I certainly can't claim that Goodman Town is a great film... the flaws are
numerous and large, but it has quite a lot going for it as well. It's
fun, stylish and quite creative - just not very well directed and very badly
acted. There are some decent special effects and some cute girls (and boys),
and lots of action though, which is good enough for a popcorn movie.
Not one we're likely to see get wide international distribution though.
Which means, most people are going to have to go to the Thai DVD if they
want to see the film. The Mangpong release is below average even for
a (recent) Thai film - non anamorphic widescreen picture from a reasonably
clean print, with English subtitles burnt into the image (optional Thai subtitles
can be displayed above these, taking up half the image with text, with most
readers of this review won't require those I presume). The picture
quality is acceptable, but the DVD features an absolutely terrible 5.1 sound
mix - really thin, weak and unbalanced. Thankfully a stereo Thai track
is provided as well, and this sounds much better.
Certainly not essential viewing, but quite fun
and unique. 7/10