Title: Bangkok Dangerous
MPAA: R
Runtime: 99 minutes
Director: Oxide Pang Chun

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

I think I am not entirely alone when I say that I often question the direction my life has taken, and that perhaps, just maybe, I should have been an assassin-for-hire. I think everyone has that thought at some point in their life. And so, when I watch a movie like Bangkok Dangerous, I can't help but live out my little fantasy in some small way ... the fantasy, that is, of eating an entire box of Cocoa Puffs, drowning in a pint of Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream. I'm sure this brazen act of self-indulgence influenced the way I later felt about Bangkok Dangerous.

Nicolas Cage plays Joe Assassin, while a Pygmy Three-toed Sloth plays Mr. Cage's hair. Joe, from what I can tell during the first 15 minutes of the film, specializes in Super-Duper Easy Kills, such as the kind that involve offing a high-profile prisoner who, for some reason, is being interrogated in an upper-floor tiny room with a GIGANTIC window, which is across the street from several tall buildings featuring corporate names like The Sniper's Nest (I am JOKING, of course ... the real name was The Sniper's NestCoTechDex). Joe is also extremely adept at knocking off young, fidgeting, nervous errand runners who come to drop off his salary.

Unfortunately, even though Joe runs the gauntlet of an incredibly high number of shoot-out scenes (more shoot-outs, in fact, than Shoot Out), no one manages to kill the pygmy sloth, and so Joe escapes the movie with his offensive hair completely unharmed.

The crux of the story is that Joe is on his "last job", which means two things: 1) he wants to get out of the killing business, and 2) there is no way he can survive this film, at least, not if the script is going to play by the rules. A life-long assassin cannot simply retire and go on to live a peaceful life on an island somewhere; he has to die, whether it be in a gun fight, a knife fight, a fist fight, or simply getting hit by a bus.

However! This is a Nicolas Cage movie, and there is absolutely no guarantee that it's going to play by the established rules of story-telling, so it's anyone's guess how this movie will end. All I know is that his hair doesn't die.

This "last job" of Joe's is a four-for-one; he needs to bump off four targets identified by his Bangkokian client. We get to watch him drive around and look hard at things for a long time, occasionally delivering lines in his iconic, monotone mumble: "We'd better get out of here ... something's not right", "This food is hot ... really hot", "I'll find a way in ... you just stay here." There's not enough Pepsi Max in the world to elevate this guy's heartbeat.

Meanwhile, as the movie unfolds, we will get to watch the veteran, battle-hardened, steel-faced, unfeeling killer undergo an unprompted transformation which, inexplicably, causes him to take a young protege under his wing and fall in love with a Bangkokette who speaks in sign-languge.

(FOR DISCUSSION: When a Thai woman speaks in sign-language, can an American man understand it? If her words are different from our words, will her signs be different from our signs? If not, will her signing come with a thick, impossible-to-understand accent?)

I learned one extremely important life lesson from the final shoot-out scene: if you need to dodge a bullet which has just been fired at you from close-range, just duck. You won't get hit. Seems odd, I know, but trust me - I saw it with my own eyes, several times, so I'm pretty sure it will work.

Please send more Cocoa Puffs and Ben & Jerry's. Oh, and if anyone can come up with a convincing story behind the name Bangkok Dangerous, feel free to throw in. Email themichaelodian at gmail.