ELEPHANT WHITE DVD (2011)

SYNOPSIS: Mercenary Curtie Church (Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond) is hired to take out a notorious Thai sex-trafficking gang by a father s whose daughter was kidnapped and murdered by the gang. With the help of a ruthless weapons dealer (Kevin Bacon, Mystic River), Church finds the men he is hired to kill. But what starts as a paying job turns into an outright war between two rival gangs, and Church finds himself caught between the corrupt world that surrounds him and the truth behind the man who hired him.

MOVIE REVIEW:

It was only a matter of time before director Prachya Pinkaew made the leap into Hollywood territory after his collaborations with Tony Jaa- ‘Tom Yum Goong’ and ‘Ong Bak’- became acclaimed as among some of the most memorable action movies in recent history. Yet despite a solid action star turn from Djimon Hounsou, his first English-language feature ‘Elephant White’ is quite the underwhelming experience, never coming close to delivering the sort of guilty-pleasure B-movie thrills we’ve come to expect.

The story by B-action movie specialist Kevin Bernhardt couldn’t be simpler- once a CIA trained assassin, Curtie Church (Hounsou) is now a gun-for-hire, and recruited by a man aggrieved by the loss of his daughter to take revenge on the underworld figures responsible for her death. There’s a whole seedy trade of human trafficking, and once Church gets mixed up in it, he develops a conscience and takes it upon himself to find a way out for these girls still trapped in the trade.

Ammo-wise, Church turns to another former CIA operative Jimmy (Kevin Bacon), who is now working for the same gang that he is targeting. Throw in some succession plans involving a loyal adviser and the kingpin’s son, and you get a barely there plot that’s just about enough to carry the movie throughout its brief 91-min runtime. And as if acknowledging the skimpiness of the story, Pinchew throws in some religious mysticism revolving around a girl called Mae whom Church develops a connection to.

It’s a misguided move ultimately, for Pinchew strains his audience’s goodwill by asking them to accept that Church would so easily allow someone to get so close to him, and even more become his moral compass. If the setup doesn’t ire you, then the incessant moral talk about right, wrong, the absence of both, what is and what is to come will certainly leave you peeved. We don’t doubt it fits into the context, but Pinchew has little finesse as a filmmaker, and dumps the moralising upon his audience like shoving it down their throats.

In return, Pinchew offers little by way of his trademark hard-hitting action. Church is a sniper, and there really isn’t much hand-to-hand combat fighting that we anticipate from a Pinchew film. Hounsou performs what stunts there are in the movie capably enough, but the action choreography is just too mediocre. Most unforgivable is how the film’s best sequence where Church confronts a whole bunch of goons in the forest en route to killing the triad’s head honcho turns out to be all in Church’s head, a cop-out that exhausts any generosity on the part of its audience.

Even the supposed twist at the end of the film is entirely predictable, and never quite disguises the lame excuse for the silly mayhem that Church causes between two rival gangs. Frustrating too is Kevin Bacon’s presence in the movie, the actor clearly worthy of much better material than a supporting role in something as insignificant as this- and we pity the actor for the flak he’s been getting for the English accent he puts on.

Hounsou deserves much better as well, the Oscar-nominated actor now slumming it in direct to video flicks like this. He probably saw potential for this to be the next ‘Blood Diamond’, given the reference it makes to a pertinent social issue- that of human trafficking. Yet Pinchew is clearly not the right director for this material, and for that matter, neither is his screenwriter Bernhardt- so ‘Elephant White’ is quite simply a disappointment. And in case you’re wondering what the title means- a white elephant is apparently a gesture of peace, the animal being a sign of purity and harmony. Just flipping the description around to give the movie its name should already tell you just how unimaginative the filmmakers are.

AUDIO/VISUAL:

The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track gives a solid surround sound experience when the bullets are flying; otherwise, it’s relatively quiet throughout the movie. Visuals are clear, with good contrast between the dark and light tones during the night scenes.

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Gabriel Chong