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RAGING PHOENIX (Thailand)

 ABOUT THE MOVIE

Genre: Action
Starring: Yanin Vismitananda, Kazu Patrick Tang, Nui Sandang, Sompong Lertwimonkasem, Boonprasert Sala-ngam, Roongtawan Jindasing
Director: Rashane Limtrakul
Rating: PG (Some Violence)
Year Made: 2009

 


 SPECIAL FEATURES

- NIL

 

 


 TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Languages: Thai
Subtitles: Thai/Chinese
Aspect Ratio: 16x9
Sound: Dolby Digital
Running Time: 1 hr 49 mins
Region Code: 3
Distributor: Scorpio East
Official Website:


 

 

SYNOPSIS: 

Deu, a girl with equally high degree of recklessness and beauty has never experienced 'true love'. Her life changes completely when some gangsters try to kidnap her and she narrowly escapes with the help of Sanim, a sad looking stranger with a painful past. Waking up in an abandoned factory, she joins his friends who practice a form of drunken Thai break-dancing martial arts that they dub Meyraiyuth. Sanim and his friends, having had loved ones abducted, join forces to get back at the kidnappers.

MOVIE REVIEW:

The release of "Chocolate" brought to us the attention of one young plucky lady from Thailand – 'Jija' Yanin Vismistananda. The new action heroine that could easily disabled her opponents with her deadly kicks.

"Raging Phoenix" marks the twenty-six-year-old second onscreen debut and apparently it’s another effort by her production company, Baa-Ram-Ewe to showcase her fighting abilities and simultaneously broadening her acting skills. However, the less than whelming script by director Rashane Limtrakul and co-writer Sompope Vejchapipat contribute nothing substantial but truckloads of unnecessary melodramatic effects in the end.

The story in fact started on a pretty right note. Yanin plays Deu, a spoilt but neglected daughter of a single parent. Betrayed by a two-timing boyfriend and intoxicated, she escaped being kidnapped only when a stranger, Sanim (the Vietnamese-French Kazu Patrick Tang) came to her rescue. It turns out that Sanim and his friends have been tracking down this group of kidnappers who took young girls away and turned them into prostitutes. Sanim’s wife-to-be happened to be one of the victims and ever since, Sanim has been indulging in grief and practice a form of strange martial-arts that looks like a combination of hip-hop dance steps and drunken fist-kung fu moves dubbed Meyraiyuth in order to get his love one back from the ruthless kidnappers.

One can see the heartening attempts by the filmmakers to create a more dimensional character for Yanin. Indeed Deu seems a more developed character as compared to the autistic Zen in "Chocolate". Yanin is given ample opportunities here to showcase her acting range as Deu struggles to be empathized and on the brink of despair from time to time. Then again, "Raging Phoenix" is not the type of movie you should be looking for in terms of award-winning performances thus Rashane Limtrakul struggles to insert plenty of fighting sequences (just in case you get bored) inbetween the various plotlines to keep audience entertained. In addition, the origins of the mixed-bag Meyraiyuth is not thoroughly explained either and audience is left hanging as to how this form of martial-arts came about.

Like the heydays of Hong Kong action cinemas, "Raging Phoenix" features a prolonged action finale that sadly overstayed its welcome. Consisting of a mind-fuddling plot twist that involves the concoction of perfume, a tiresome romance angle between the leads and insipid sparring scenes, it’s quite an anti-climax consider it has a promising setup and the cast including Patrick Tang and of course Yanin impresses with their agility and their b-boy breakdancing moves.

The movie which carries a touted 60 million baht production budget (double that of Ong Bak) according to producer Prachya Pinkaew may impresses on first viewing the weird awkward combination of dance moves and martial-arts and the occasional slow-mo high flip and kicks, other than these it’s hard to justify Yanin as a raging phoenix.

SPECIAL FEATURES :

NIL

AUDIO/VISUAL:

If half of the Singapore population understand or speak Thai then it will be a logical choice to include Thai as an option for the subtitles. But in this DVD, there’s only an option between Chinese and Thai subtitles so if you can’t understand both, I guess you won’t be picking up this title anytime soon.

The visual scores with its beautiful shots of the lush beaches and oceanic sky and the audio provide a reasonably strong bass accompanied by frequent loud hip-hop music.

MOVIE RATING:



DVD RATING :

Review by Linus Tee

Posted on 25 January 2010

 
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This review is made possible with the kind support from Scorpio East

 



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