Hit Man File
Reviewed by Simon Booth
Director: Sananjit Bangsapan
Cast: Chitchai Plengpanit, Saranyoo Wongkrachang,
Suntisuk Promsiri, Bongkot Kongmalai, Thanit Jitnukul
Year: 2005
Running Time: 95 minutes
Hey, where am I? Who are
all these people? What's going on? I'm confused!
As a big fan of badly subtitled
wu xia pian, this is not an unfamiliar state for me - but since HIT MAN FILE
is neither badly subtitled nor wu xia, I do feel that I should have had more
of a clue by the end of the film as to who these people were, and more importantly
why they were killing each other. The overall plot is fairly straightforward
- organised criminals, police (corrupt and uncorrupt) and politicians all
have agendas of the conflicting kind and people must die. A former soldier
turned hitman gets caught up in the crossfire, as does his generously endowed
agent. The details, however, are often rather murky - I may have known who
the characters were, but not like I _knew_ them. It felt like I was only
seeing pieces of a bigger story that writer/director Sananjit Bangsapan clearly
had in his head, but chose not to share with us (or assumed greater powers
of clairvoyancy in his audience than I can bring to the table).
It's clear that the director
had the desire to create a moody, stylised and fatalistic story of characters
on the edge of society, and that Wong Kar-Wai was an inspiration (specifically
FALLEN ANGELS and CHUNGKING EXPRESS, though this film is far less giddy or
quirky than either). However, he neglected to provide us with the voice-overs
that WKW used to help the viewer become acquainted with his characters and
their stories. I'm not averse to films that credit the viewer with enough
intelligence to figure out what's going on without having expository dialogue
shoved down their eye sockets - but I guess I need a little more to work
with than HIT MAN FILE provides.
Which is a shame, because
there's a lot to like about it - it's very nicely shot, has a good soundtrack
and is generally of a high technical standard. There are some good shoot-outs
(quite realistic - don't expect John Woo style bullet ballet), mostly good
acting and a lot of atmosphere. It's just that the lack of character definition
left me feeling very detached from it all... events that are probably very
interesting if you understand their place in the big picture fail to raise
any great sense of emotional involvement, because the big picture is a blur.
It's still a fairly enjoyable
watch with some really nice scenes, but the enjoyment is mostly found from
aesthetics - I was not engaged by the story. All in all, quite a strange
film to end up getting an R1 release (from KINO) when so many more accessible
Thai films do not. Probably because it's aimed at the art-house crowd who
can stroke their beards afterwards and feel superior to those poor plebians
who watch simple little films with plots they can understand - what a small
world they inhabit. Which, come to think of it, I'm not averse to doing myself!
But it definitely felt that more could have been made of the film - and recalling
the Pang Brother's BANGKOK DANGEROUS, it might be said that it already has.
6 beard strokes out of 10