This seems like the perfect music video for the next film on the WATC(H): Bangkok Dangerous (2008)

Go ahead, treat yourself…I’ll wait.

Did you catch any of those lyrics?

One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster

The bars are temples, but the pearls ain’t free

You’ll find a god in every golden cloister

And if you’re lucky, then the god’s a she

One night in Bangkok makes the hard man humble

Not much between despair and ecstasy

One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble

Can’t be too careful with your company

I can feel the devil walkin’ next to me

Surprisingly this movie filmed in Bangkok was the only Nicolas Cage movie released  in 2008. There were a handful of years earlier in his career where this happened (single movie years include: ‘88, ‘91, ‘92, ‘96, ‘03, ‘04, ‘08 and then last in ‘12) but usually one is way too pedestrian for a prolific actor like Nicky. He’s often in 2-4 movies a year, until he really starts picking up some steam, churning out up to 7 movies a year (on multiple occasions) all the way to present day.

Bangkok Dangerous, starring and produced by Cage and directed by the Pang brothers, was shot in Thailand in 2006. There’s a pretty good chance I was in the same area of the world as long-haired Nicolas Cage while this one was being filmed. I lived in China from roughly 2005-2008, but spent many months traveling in and out of Thailand–usually flying into Bangkok, often traveling into the mountains of Chiang Mai for vacation and work conferences, or enjoying a nice beach in the south (Hua Hin). 

I like to imagine that some of the horrific traffic I experienced in Bangkok (where one is languishing for two hours in a taxi moving not even an inch) was caused by streets being blocked so Cage could shoot motorcycle chase scenes, toy around with shiny gun silencers, brush his flowy locks, or just take his pad thai lunch on a balmy river boat. Thinking that Cage caused all that traffic gives it some greater purpose to what (at the time) felt like pointless and inhumane suffering.  

But who knows if our paths ever crossed, even tangentially, by a mile or a month? 

One Night In Bangkok: Dangerous

So far on the WATC(H), we’ve had rules for writing (Adaptation.) and some rules for delivering the weather forecast (The Weather Man), the rules of the con (The Matchstick Men) and entirely too many rules for how soul contracts work between the devil and his demonic middle managers (Ghost Rider). With Bangkok Dangerous, we are once again implementing a new set of rules. 

Joe’s 4 Rules for Being a Good Assassin

1. Don’t ask questions. There is no such thing as right and wrong.
2. Don’t take an interest in people outside of work. There is no such thing as trust.
3. Erase every trace. Come anonymous, and leave nothing behind.
4. Know when to get out. Before you lose your edge, before you become a target. 

So in case these rules don’t tell you something, Joe (Nicolas Cage) is a stone-cold assassin who will kill anything walking or talking, as long as the price is right, it adheres to his four rules, and no one tells him to get a haircut. 

(Incidentally, this long-hair Cage seems to be a trend in late 2000s, and not a good one IMHO. It started in Wicker Man, continued in Next, and has been growing its way out thru National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets and now Bangkok Dangerous. There’s something about having the extreme receding hairline that cancels out whatever growth points you are getting for sides and back.) 

Joe kills people and he’s good at it. But there’s a sense that he doesn’t exactly love his life. Living by those rules, who would? You can’t enjoy a penny of your earnings, if if you have to kill your curiosity, relationships, legacy, and connection to even play the game.

So Joe heads to Thailand for a “last big score” before hanging up his “guns” in retirement. He follows his rules, cases out the big burly town of Bangkok, and finds a young protege to help him stay anonymous but “do the work” assigned to him by his unnamed bosses. His protege, Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm), is a bit of a young street urchin who doesn’t mind getting his hands a little dirty for some cash, but who also has a heart and conscience about who is or isn’t getting killed by Joe. Kong mostly grabs briefcases with either guns or dossiers Joe uses to find and kill his marks.

Joe is a hard man who values punctuality (and general timeliness) more than most,  but he’s good at what he does and finds his rhythm of “death-dealing” pretty quickly in Thailand. Against the backdrop of this, the viewer is treated to all the stereotypical sights and sounds of the land formerly known as Siam. You’ve got your sex parlors, your Thai boxing, your night markets, your lumbering elephants, your floating flower shops, and your Buddhist temples. It’s all there like a travel commercial. And in the midst of the killing and the chaos of Bangkok, Joe meets a beautiful deaf mute pharmacist named Fon (Charlie Yeung). 

You read that right deaf mute pharmacist. 

The two find a way to communicate through spicy foods and hand signals and a blossoming romance ensues. 

But then the Shady men who have hired Joe to kill those who oppose them politically and criminally, decide they no longer trust their hired Assassin and that he is now a liability. So, they decide to go after Joe and all the people he associates with. Before this happens though, while out on a date with Fon, Joe kills some muggers in the park (gut reaction to having his wallet lifted) which royally freaks out Fon. She doesn’t hear or see it happen (because deaf / mute) but turns to see the deadly aftermath and feels the blood splatters on her shoulder. She sees that maybe this relationship isn’t going to work out for her–Joe’s not too gentle–and flees.

The bad guys go after Kong as a way to find Joe, and Joe realizes he can’t ever really have Fon because of rule #2, so he takes the battle to his employer, John Wick style. (I was a little sleepy while watching the end but I think Joe springs Kong and his girlfriend? Or maybe Kong gets killed in the melee? That might be more accurate.) Joe ends up carjacking the escaping Shady guy’s ride while he is still in the back seat. The two of them are sitting in the vehicle together. Everyone else in the bad guy crew is already dead, and Joe has a gun… As the police surround the shootout area, Joe leans in close to Shady guy pulls a pistol up to his own head and then shoots himself and Shady guy in a two-for-one ultimate finale sendoff. The End.

One Night in Bangkok: Pearls Ain’t Free

I think there was supposed to be some Asian wisdom in this movie about non-violence or something, but if so it was pretty subtle. Fon is definitely the only real protagonist because of her innocence, but because she can neither speak nor hear, let’s just say her impact on the film is “quite muted” (ba-dump-dump) and she seems flat as a character because of it. You want to root for Kong, but he just seems caught up in a bigger game than he is equipped to handle. He’s mostly interested in wooing a local call girl who hangs out in the same circles as the Shady guys. 

The funniest “pearl of wisdom” is that Joe has a picture in his home of an elephant’s head. The trunk is pointing down towards the ground. Kong tells him it’s bad luck for the trunk to be pointed down and it should be pointed up. So Joe later, hangs the picture upside down–trunks up baby! But after things fall apart with Fon, Joe burns the picture. He likes burning things it seems (he burns the photos of every victim he is about to kill.) 

One Night in Bangkok: Careful With Your Company

I am not sure if this was supposed to be Mr. Miyagi mentor-tutor relationship, but Joe takes Kong under his wing for a few scenes and tries to teach him the lost art of assassination. It involves some hand-to-hand combat, some target practice, some time management, and evidence erasing techniques. I am not sure if any of these lessons were worth it to Kong, but Joe coached him up to the best of his ability.

One Night in Bangkok: God’s a She

Nicolas Cage produced this movie which means it must have been important to him. I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not it had something to do with an Asian fetish he has. Now this is a bit of a conspiracy theory of mine (and people can date whomever they choose! I’m all for it!) but Cage has been married five times, and 2 out of 5 of those women are Asian. Coincidence? Next even featured his now ex-wife Alice Kim in one short scene, so he’s definitely violating his own rule #2 here–mixing his personal life in his business life. He has a type is all I’m suggesting here. 

One Night in Bangkok: Devil Walkin’ Next to Me

This is the first Nicolas Cage “suicide” ending that I can recall. I don’t count Wicker Man because that was not consensual at all! (“The bees! Not the bees!”) I believe this movie frames Joe as a kind of devil (even though there was an alternate ending suggested where he doesn’t kill himself.) There’s some empathy there and some hope that he won’t be a tragic character, but you kind of know that he will. Joe is a hard man and I think by the end of the film he knows there’s not much hope for him in “polite society” because of his rules and how he’s followed them so well. He kills one of his proteges / assistants early in the film and makes it look like a heroin overdose, he chops off a dude’s hand with a boat propeller, and he riddles a car with bullets from a motorcycle on a busy Bangkok street (seemingly unsympathetic to anyone else who might catch a stray bullet from his gun). He’s a workaholic I guess, but mos def a foreign white devil, too.

Firsts

• First time as an assassin / hitman
• Faking a heroin overdose
• Living in Thailand
• Wearing the stereotypical cat burglar outfit 
• Killing a dude in a swimming pool
• Feeding an elephant
• Chopping off a guy’s hand with a boat propeller
• Visiting a Buddhist temple
• Kills himself (gunshot wound to the head) in a 2 for 1

Recurrence

• Bad long hair (Next, Zandalee)
• Second time he’s just a standard Joe (Windtalkers)
• Going deep into sex underbelly of a major metropolitan area (8mm)
• Riding a motorcycle (Wicker Man, Ghost Rider) 
• Wearing a tank top (Deadfall, Raising Arizona)
• Taking on a protege in a criminal venture (Matchstick Men)
• Doing pushups (Boy in Blue, The Best of Times)
• Being the guy behind the sniper’s scope (Face/Off)

Some Quotes from Joe:

“It’s tough when you live out of a suitcase. I go where I’m told. Do what I’m told.”

“I shouldn’t complain. The work is steady. The money’s good. But it’s not for everyone.”

“My name is Joe. This is what I do.” 

“Bangkok. It’s corrupt, dirty and dense.”

“The human face can mislead in a thousand different ways. But the eyes never change. I was told to start with the eyes.”

Conclusion

Thailand’s Mass Communication Organization banned the song One Night In Bangkok from the airwaves in 1985 because it didn’t paint the country / city in the best light. I’m curious whether or not they also considered banning Bangkok Dangerous in 2008. It’s not the worst movie Nicolas Cage has appeared in so far, but it’s also far from the best. Regardless of it’s quality, I still like to imagine that I walked on the same streets or went to the same giganto-malls in Bangkok visited by Nicolas Cage circa 2006-2007, whenever he was shooting this film.

Or maybe he had an appointment at the U.S. embassy in Bangkok for a passport renewal just a few hours after or before my appointment? We sat in the same seat? We touched the same pen?

I mean who knows? I just think it would be cool if we were dangerously close to one another one night in Bangkok. 

I can feel an angel sliding up to me.