When JD (Kenny Wang) is fired from his dull desk job, two of his old college buddies invite him to Thailand for some old fashion R&R. Landing at Bangkok airport he meets his old pals John Walker and Gordon Goldman, who both have become successful international businessmen in Thailand. Straight to Pattaya, the city of sin, his friends promise him a vacation he'll never forget. JD quickly learns the ropes of the bar-life and is having the time of his life. His friends get a crisis-call from their biggest client, Mr. Suntory, and abruptly leave JD alone in the world's biggest red-light district. Not wanting to miss out on any fun, JD continues his heavy drinking until he passes out. Hungover and thirsty, JD wakes up in the boiling hot jungle with no idea where he is and no memory of how he got there. With no mobile reception, no money and only Viagra in his pockets, JD starts his journey back to civilization. Battling both heat and humidity, he finds himself more and more on the brink of total meltdown, all the while getting mixed up in a dispute he understands nothing of. Killing Heat is written by Kenny Wang and Daniel Dahl who also is the director. The acting is decent, the camerawork and editing is pretty good. Killing Heat does take it´s time to get going as JD and his friends visit bars, get drunk, pick up hookers and so on. Not sure but some of the nightlife footage looks like it might have been shot with a hidden camera. Things look authentic and it´s refreshing (at least for me) to see a new and exotic setting. This flick is not for the politically correct and there are some scenes that many might find "a bit" offensive but as I hate spoilers I won´t go into any details. There are also some comic relief, some of this due to cultural differences. When the action gets going it, JD goes into Rambo-mode as he takes on countless locals in shootouts and hand to hand combat. It´s quite evident that the actionscenes are inspired by classic John Woo movies, for instance we get two fisted gunplay and some guns seem to have limitless magazine capacity. Our hero gets to do some fancy moves while shooting guns and so on. Even if I hesitate to admitting it the gunplay actually does get a bit repetitive and boring but it seems that the filmakers were aware of this and therefore added fightscenes, there are some martial arts on display and it looks pretty good (actually much better than expected) and I actually wished that they would have had more of it on screen. An added bonus to the fightscenes is that the blood splashes freely as people gets punched and kicked. Most of the gore consists of computer rendered squibs and there are a lot of them but there are some practical fx in it also. There is T & A (mostly petite looking thai actresses) and sexscenes in this.
Support independent filmmaking and order your copy here . It´s available on both DVD and Blu-ray.
This review is based upon the region 0 (Region All) dvd release from 3 F. The dialogue spoken is in english and thai.
Rating: 6 out of 7. I enjoyed this. It´s a politically incorrect violent shoot 'em up flick and in my opinion the filmmakers have made the most out of their limited budget. It looks good, much better than I was expecting, and kept me entertained throughout its running time.
/JL
No comments:
Post a Comment