Man of the Week: Bin Bunluerit

I know very little of Bin Bunluerit, but this promotion photo from Roy Pah (ร้อยป่า, 1986) kinda made him an obvious choice for my short-lived series of Man of the Week posts. This is the first one since 2010! Well, enjoy - a half-naked, muscular man with a chainsaw is always welcome here at Ninja Dixon!

And for you who's interested in Thai movies, welcome to The Mee Noi Thai Movie Review - with two new, fresh reviews packed with killer crocodiles!

Wardaat (1981)

CBI Officer Gopi, more known to the civilized world as Gunmaster G-9 is back in business! Yeah, it's Wardaat - the even more spectacular disco-dancing sequel to Surakksha! Crazier, bigger and jam-packed with martial arts - but what else to expect with Mithun Chakraborty as the hero? As you might have noticed I'm having a little 007-week here at Ninja Dixon and somehow it felt very logical to at least include one exotic Bond-rip off (and I've seen and reviewed more than a few) into the schedule, and what fits better than something from the film metropol of the world: Bollywood (or Bombay aka Mumbai of course). The two movies with Gunmaster G-9 could be the only Bond-style films to be close to a franchise, and the truth is that a third movie was under production but never finished around ten years later. I've heard that the son of director Ravikant Nagaich still is trying to get a new movie going (why don't you visit the semi-officialFacebook page?)

The elegant Gunmaster G-9 car.

Super-mega-agent Gunmaster G-9 (Mithun Cakraborty) is called into duty after a mysterious crime organization is causing disasters by having an army of locusts attack and destroy people and property. But the organizatino, lead by the mysterious Jumbala (or something similar) who might be the most EVIL super-villain ever, because he's....

1. A hunchback!

2. A deformed eye!

3. A scar across his face!

4. A huge nose!

5. An impressive set of crooked teeth!

He also have the most EVIL plan ever to take over the world:

1. Plastic-looking children raised as his brainwashed slaves!

2. A super serum that turns big-breasted women super-strong!

3. Grain the will give everyone disabled children!

4. Plus the now infamous army of locusts!

 He also lives in a secret Egyptian temple with his army of henchmen that will give their life for him without questions asked!

Eviiiiiil!!!!!

So, yes - without a doubt: this is crazy and confusing and I lost track of the story 10-15 times during the film. Not that this is a bad thing, because Gunmaster G-9 is all about extremely silly song- and dance-numbers, lots of martial arts and wild action scenes conducted by slightly chubby stuntmen. Chakraborty himself is quite fit and athletic and it's quite easy for him to kill one fatso after another with everything from guns and sharp objects, but mostly the deadly force of his hands and feet!

I love fights that goes on forever - and just like the dancing in this movie everything is very drawn out, which means often very imaginative action scenes with lots of stunts and not-so-special effects. But it's the thought that counts. Especially one of the fights is extra interesting because it's almost like a Indian Jackie Chan-scene, with Gunmaster G-9 inside some kind of factory using the stuff he finds as weapons - something that later became Jackie's trademarks during the wild eighties. Just like Surakksha there's not even a hint of realism and some of the visual effects in on the border to being cartoonish - for example the Egypitan temple which seem to be either postcards or diapositives, which in the last case means some actors looks like they're half-invisible walking in front of the projection! It becomes even more surreal with the presence of Cakraborty's ego who's bigger than ever. This film has several of those scenes when women literary runs to him, wanting to have him because he's so damn sexy and strong and jadajadajada. Oh, and he battles a (fake) tiger with his own bare hands! That's Indian action and it's over-the-top!

Wardaat also has some interesting casting. Among the actors is a Chinese (I guess) martial arts guy who's pretty good. He's not credited in the movie, but maybe one of you will recognize him with the help of these two images:

A couple of actors who have no idea what the hell they're doing in this movie are these gentlemen:

"So, do you think they'll drive us back to the hotel after this shit?"

I'm not saying this is a technically perfect film, but it's charming and has a lot of action - everything from kung fu to sword fights - and that will make most of you enjoy this piece of awesomeness as much as I did. There's just something very special about Indian action from the time when they cared more about entertainment than using flashy editing and looking fit in front of the camera. It just feels more human. 

007 goes Alex Carriére: A guest review of Dr. No (1962)

Before I watched Dr. No today, I had seen it one other time, and that was 10 years ago. I was considerably younger then and I found Dr. No to be very boring and unlike the rest of the Bond series, which I was pretty familiar with by the time I was 14. Like I mentioned in my text on Goldfinger, I am very much a fan of the fun and campy side of James Bond, so Dr. No seemed way off to me as a 14 year old kid. This time around I actually enjoyed Dr. No quite a bit. I went into it this time having more of an idea of what to expect.

In Dr. No, Bond finds himself in Jamaica, investigating the death of a fellow agent. Before he gets there, he is playing cards in London with a fine looking woman who introduces herself as, “Trench, Sylvia Trench,” to which James replies, “Bond, James Bond.” So for the first time in the series we get to hear the classic Bond introduction, and I wasn’t even aware that Sylvia Trench was the one who started it in the first place! James is called in to the office, but it is implied that he still has time to give Ms. Trench what she came for. Walking into the MI6 office, James throws his hat on the coat rack, which becomes a series staple, along with his “relationship” with Moneypenny. While talking to M, Bond has his gun replaced with a Walther PPK, which has become known as being the classic James Bond gun. I found it interesting that Bond commented about how he was using his Beretta for 10 years, meaning he has been working for MI6 for at least 10 years prior to this. Now I know that Dr. No wasn’t the first Bond novel by Fleming (Casino Royale was) so there was some room for them to play with characters who already had relationships established, making for better dialogue and just a more engaging environment all together. I’m glad that they finally did make Casino Royale (not the ’67 spoof), because I always thought it would be interesting to see how James Bond got his start, though you don’t really get to see that in Casino Royale either, but closer.

In Jamaica, Bond finds himself making progress, however slowly. Yes this movie is a lot slower than the Bond movies that would come after it, but this isn’t always a bad thing. I realized why I would have thought this movie was boring when watching it when I was 14. I wanted campy James Bond action, and this movie is seriously lacking in that department. Anything in this movie that seems campy is probably just a result of a lower budget. That being said, there are a few great moments of Bond’s famous witticism. 

What surprised me most about this movie was Bond’s killing. In most Bond movies, the killing is faceless. In Dr. No, Bond kills a few people really bluntly, which actually surprised me to see. These kills aren’t gory or particularly brutal by any means, but they are much more realistic situations, which I think makes them have a greater impact on the viewer. There are two examples of this that come to my mind. The first one is when James sets a trap (the classic pillow under the sheets trick), and when the man arrives to assassinate Bond, Bond is waiting there for him. Bond sits him down in a chair, asks him questions, then shoots him point blank after he’s done asking questions. The second is when Bond, Ryder, and Quarrel are hiding from Dr. No’s henchmen. When one of the henchmen comes by them, scanning the area, Bond sneaks up behind him and kills him with a knife! Honey even asks James, “Why?” to which he replies, “Because I had to.” I’m so glad they added this exchange in the dialogue, because it really drove the point home that James isn’t in this for the killing, but he knows that it is part of the job.

Dr. No is a pretty good villain. I really enjoyed that they didn’t show him for most of the movie, and just let you hear his voice. This added a nice mysterious tone to his character, something that they tried to echo later in the series, less successfully though. Bond has good chemistry with Dr. No, which is an element that I actually enjoy quite a bit, this is seen again in movies like Goldfinger and The Man With the Golden Gun.

Dr. No was a good movie, and I’m glad I took the time to revisit it. It isn’t exactly what I want from a Bond movie, but I did enjoy it quite a bit. Dr. No is just so different from the other Bond movies that in some ways it can’t even be judged against the others. When I want to watch James Bond, I will always return to my favorites, because I’m probably looking for a lighthearted adventure, with great cheesy lines and awesome music. When I want to watch a cool spy movie that is a lot more serious and realistic I would definitely choose Dr. No. 

Shaitani Dracula (2006)

So you think you've seen it? Well, fuck that. You haven't "seen it all" until you've seen Harinam Singh's Shaitani Dracula (the reason why I've written 2006 as the production year is because that's the only year I've found - it looks more like something made '89 or '90), a horror movie so extremely incompetent it actually feels unreal watching it, like it's a parody of "bad" movies - but this is not a spoof. It's a completely serious try at horror and boy, did they fail! This doesn't mean it's not worth watching, it's more the opposite because it manages to be very entertaining between the pointless scenes of people walking around in a big garden for 80 minutes.

Dracula is a chubby dude with moustache and cowboy hat who resides in a big villa. His garden is filled with monsters - female vampires, demons, zombies, a werewolf or two and of course a large number of idiots walks into this garden just this evening and gets attacked by all the monsters and the decide to hook up and destroy Dracula once and for all!

Yeah, that's it. Nothing more. Well, maybe it would be some more layer to this story if there would have been subtitles on the DVD, but somehow I feel it really doesn't matter. This is Shaitani Dracula and it doesn't give a fuck if some Swedish geekosaurus sees it and complains about the script. It's bigger than that. What's strikes me most - except the complete lack of story - is how it manages to fail on every technical level possible. It's like a blind (nothing against those who have a visual impairment) has been setting up the shots and then asked the actors to do what they want for about two minutes and then just use the first and only take.

Just look at the fairy-demon girl. She's flying. Well, she's not flying, she's balancing on something out of frame, and she does the balancing very badly. My guess is that they just put her on top of two boxes who's on top of a wheelchair and then some poor production assistant pushes it over bumpy lawn and everyone think it looks fantastic! I should also mention the duck that kinda takes over one shot, close to the camera - completely out of focus - and stands there (and it looks like someone is lifting it up also), without reason and it looks terrible - as terrible as one of the first shots where a woman is standing in the rain and the rain is just a dude standing just outside the shot holding a hose, and it's very visible that it's just a hose doing the rain on just the spot she's standing on.

My favourite scene in the whole movie - well, the second best scene - is when one of the werewolves is attacking a girl and he's dropping his mask - not just once, but twice, and it's IN the friggin' movie. He just puts it on again and continues the scene. It's like the editor had no idea what's gonna be in a movie or not - just like that scene when two women just stands waiting for someone to say action and then starts acting. It could have worked if it was a weird, slow, dialogue scene - but here on of the women is attacking the other one. Looks odd. Do I even have to add that all the monster make-up just is cheap masks you can buy in the nearest supermarket. The werewolf, for example, has ordinary shoes on under his furcoat-esque costume.

The spectacular final is another classic. It's hard to explain, but imagine a long fight between two crippled and old people, almost in slow-motion, with extreme sound effects for every hit they give each other. I mean man, just see it. Watch it, and then you will understand!

Shaitani Dracula is one of the worst Indian films I've seen - it doesn't mean it's bad or boring - it's just crazy, sloppy, idiotic, moronic, incompetent and crappy! The existing DVD has quality so bad I've seen snuff movies in better quality! ;) 

007 Goes Eighties Action: Licence to Kill (1989)

Timothy Dalton is still a criminally underrated 007 and Licence to Kill also became his last adventure as the slightly psychotic British super agent. I'll admit that Dalton never felt comfortable when it came to the comedy, the one-liners, he almost looks a bit embarrassed uttering cheap jokes and sexual innuendos, but when it comes to action and drama he was brilliant (Dalton much later proved to be very funny in, for example, Hot Fuzz)! After feeling a bit out of date (but still good), the Bond-franchise finally entered the more gritty and violent eighties action-style here, and that grittiness was something we shouldn't see again until Daniel Craig took over the part after Pierce Brosnan.

After finally meeting the girl of his dreams, Felix Leiter (David Hedison) weds her with the help of his good friend Bond (Timothy Dalton), but the happiness lasts just a few hours until his bride is killed and himself brutally chomped by on a white shark! Bond gets very, very, very angry and sets out on his own personal revenge adventure - and gets his licence to kill revoked by M! This doesn't stop him to go to Mexico and at the same time stop the biggest drug lord in the world, Sanchez (Robert Davi) - the one behind the crime against Leiter!

This have happen a couple of times before and after, going back to the roots that is. I think the first time was with Live and Let Die (almost a sibling to this movie, but more on that later), then in For Your Eyes Only and later with GoldenEye and of course the whole Daniel Craig-business. Then the franchise will jump the shark as usual, something I don't mind really. That's just fun. But Dalton never jumped the shark, he began as serious Bond and ended as serious Bond and Licence to Kill is without a doubt one of the finest in the series. Shot on a much lower budget than the earlier movies and in just two countries, the US and Mexico (except some exterior shots in the UK) - so it's not especially exotic. Instead it's the most American Bond-movie so far, with a story that reflects reality a bit more. No one is taking over the world,  it's just a revenge tale that goes over to stopping a drug lord from smuggling cocaine mixed with gasoline.

Like in Live and Let Die David Hedison is back as Felix Leiter, they're chasing a drug lord (dropping the usual story of world domination), and both Sharkey in Licence to Kill and Quarrel in Live and Let Die is very similar characters. Licence is also one of the few Bond-movies that makes a reference to his wife who got killed in Her Majesty's Secret Service. Ah, and both movies has a graphic scene of a man exploding from air pressure!  This might of course be a coincidence, but I think the producers looked back to find something more modern, something that would attract today's audience and not their mother and father. This just didn't work anyway, and Licence to Kill became a flop in the US - where a success is very important, and then followed eight chaotic years until a new Bond-movie was released - the longest gap ever in the series.

Even if it's not high on action it has a final that's my favourite for several different reasons: it's set in a real world, it uses real stunts and not a lot of back projection and is packed with action and explosions. This chase, with cars and trucks, actually looks dangerous and it's one of John Glen's finest moments as an action director. The lamest thing with the film is the pre-credits action scene, but instead it's connected deeply with the rest of the story and works fine because of that - but still... catching a small sports plane with a wire isn't what I call spectacular.

Personally I think this is a brilliant action movie. It's nice to see something rooted more what's happening in real life, even if it's on the same level of absurdness as some of the other Bond-movies - for example the silly x-ray camera and some of the very dated jokes. But the nastiness is there, the gritty violence and cynical view on the world. And as every action movie from the eighties it even have ninjas! Brilliant - and one of them is played by Mr Eighties Evil Asian Guy himself, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa! And hey, with a supportong cast consisting of Wayne Newton, Don Stroud, Everett McGill and Benicio Del Toro, it just can't go wrong! Robert Davi is also one of the most convincing and complex Bond-baddies ever, and he's super.

Awesome stuff. Really.

Dasavatharam (2008)

I rarely write about movies I dislike, but the craziness of this failure just made me want to share my thoughts with you all. It hurts a little bit because star Kamal Hassan seems to be a nice atheist with left-wing opinions, just like me, but still he probably has the ego of someone who believes he's a god! What's even stranger is the presence of a very nice and almost heroic George W. Bush (as a character) even though Kamal Hassan was arrested because of his Arabic name in the united states 2002, a consequence of the racist and fascist politics of Bush after the 9/11 attack! Anyway, why Dasavatharam came to my knowledge was that it's considered a disaster movie, and obsessed by disaster movies from all over the world. This is the third Indian I've seen and by far the worst!

The story, if you can call it a story, is a mess like I never seen before. There's tons and tons of characters who appears and disappears without much logic behind their action, Hassan himself plays ten characters - each one with less and less convincing make-up, ranging from quite okay to just absurdly bad. One problem connected to bad make-up is that one of the leading characters has one of the worst, and it's Hassan who plays something that looks like a parody of Arnold/every eighties cliché you can think of:

And maybe you think that looks good? Well, just watch the movie and you will totally agree with me. It would be more convincing watching a Tupperware bucket running around shooting with a water gun. It doesn't help that Kamal Hassan maybe isn't so fit... well, he's probably strong, but the chubby belly kinda takes away the illusion of him playing a super-strong athletic muscle-bull.

I can sense something ambitious deep inside the storyline, something about chaos theory, something about that everything hangs together just by science and humanity (there's nothing supernatural in this film and Hassan treats religion without respect - which is good of course). All the characters played by him has some kind of connection and without everyone's help (mostly without them knowing it) the world maybe had come to an end. He even turns the 2004 Tsunami to something good - indirectly - because the force of nature helps out with something that could have caused an even bigger, worldwide, disaster.

And here we have the disaster, the 2004 Tsunami - something that affected many Asian countries and also made several of them produce their own disaster movies based on a lot of water - even China and Japan jumped on the bandwagon to use the fear of water to earn a quick buck at the box office. Here the disaster is cheap but still quite effective. It's a mix of real water and digital (and real) water added to already existing locations. Sometimes it looks good, most of the times it looks crap - including the non-CG effects. But it's still  massive, big

disaster scene, which is appreciated.

But in the end Dasavatharam is just an excuse for a lot of action, a lot of it - and most of it is extremely badly choreographed and shot, taking away the power of some nice stunt that could have been a lot cooler if they were shown in their normal speed and without a lot of unnecessary editing. What's even more fun is the overly graphic kills - for being an Indian film - which includes some really juicy squibs (my favourite is a guy that gets shot in the throat and an Fulci-esque amount of blood pumps from the hole!), a gory impaling and a guy actually almost exploding from being affected by the highly dangerous virus! That's fun!

But no, Dasavatharam is just not a good movie and with a lenght of three hours it's just doesn't have "it" for me. I've seen longer movies from India that have a fantastic quality, but here... well, I'm pretty sure they had no idea what the hell they were doing!

007 goes Alex Carriére: A guest review of Goldfinger (1964)

I'm happy to have a guest reviewer on Ninja Dixon...and it's my friend and fellow Bond-fan Alex Carriére who's doing the scribbling! Enjoy!

I’ll start by saying that Goldfinger isn’t my favorite James Bond film, as it seems to be for many people. Though I do love Goldfinger, I enjoy other Connery Bond films more, and other Moore Bond films even greater still. I was looking at Rotten Tomatoes while Goldfinger was on, and I noticed that Dr. No had the highest approval rating of any Bond film (98%). I haven’t seen Dr. No in MANY years, and this is partly because the last time I watched it I thought it was super boring (though I do want to revisit it soon, and perhaps I will for this event Fred is holding). I think that it all comes down to what you as a viewer would like to get out of a Bond flick. If you want a more serious style of 60s espionage, you definitely want to watch the early Connery Bond films. Goldfinger marks the start of a change in the Bond series, from a more conventional spy story to a more playful and entertaining action movie. After Goldfinger, Bond didn’t take itself very seriously, and personally I’m glad that happened. Part of what makes the James Bond series so fabulous is the formula they began to develop, really starting with Goldfinger.

Goldfinger starts with a pre-credit action sequence, one that is much more in depth than the previous two Bond films in the series, and is really just something to get the audience pulled in right away. This is followed by a beautiful credit sequence that was designed by Robert Brownjohn, featuring gilded women and the classic Goldfinger theme sung by Shirley Bassey. The pre-credit sequence allows for James to end up in Miami Beach, Florida, which introduces him to Goldfinger. In Miami Beach, Bond is making progress with the ladies, as always. For me, Connery always brought a real sense of a sex god to the Bond character; women seem unable to control themselves around him. Though this movie’s “Bond Girl,” Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman), puts up a fight against Bond’s sexual presence, she eventually gets her very own rape kiss. This sexual prowess is something that continues with Roger Moore, and even though I think he is more suave (looking and acting) than Connery, it still just doesn’t seem to be as convincing, maybe it’s just because Connery was in the habit of forcing himself onto women.

We get to see Bond visit the Q branch under its new title, which is always a special treat, especially for fans of the series. Q is played by Desmond Llewelyn, who has become famously known for playing Q in the Bond films. The Q gadgets become a huge part of the series after Goldfinger, and you can tell that the gadgets are new to this film because they aren’t extremely extravagant at this point. The Q branch and gadgets would eventually become a point of comic relief and connivence in the Bond series. Bond and Q have a great relationship with Q always telling Bond to, “Pay attention” when he is fooling around with the experimental gadgets, or even Q’s sandwich as he does in Goldeneye.

Goldfinger has a solid story that is fun to get engaged in. Goldfinger himself is a great character, he has a great screen presence (which became a standard for Bond villains), and such a fun personality. Like most Bond villains though, he is too confident in his plans. One of my biggest issues with this movie though is that I never once felt like Bond wasn’t going to make it, the stakes seemed incredibly low the entire time, especially compared to Bond’s future endeavors. There were times where Bond would just give up when being chased, which is more realistic I suppose, but not what I want from a Bond movie. I want to see James Bond driving the front half of a car around, then jumping into a cake. The car chase through the woods, where the Aston Martin shows off it’s Q tricks was pretty lacking, but the chase directly following that around the warehouse buildings was a lot better.

There is a scene on the plane when Bond is changing clothes and the stewardess is trying to keep an eye on him and Bond keeps blocking the peep holes. This is a lot closer to the kind of lighthearted nature of the Bond series that I enjoy a lot. I always enjoy James Bond movies a lot more when they have the playful attitude that they grew to embrace later on in the series, really starting with Goldfinger in a lot of ways. Though Goldfinger is a great movie, and a great addition to the Bond series, I feel that the series was still coming out of its shell at this point, and had a little more work to do before it became the amazing series it was. I should emphasize “was,” because I find that the Brosnan (except Goldeneye) and particularly the Craig Bond films lack that playful attitude, though not completely devoid of their moments. If you are interested in seeing a James Bond flick, there are few that you can do better with as far as status than Goldfinger, and it’s a damn good movie too! It isn’t my personal best, but it’s up there for sure.