The Story, If You Will
The film is set in a modern day Thailand. Some group of mysterious, incredibly sneaky thugs are kidnapping young Thai women in broad daylight. This has been going on for years, yet, no one seems to be able to stop the thugs from doing their dirty work.
Jeeja’s character, Deu, is presented right at the start of the film as a drummer in a rock band. She’s a young girl who just wants to find someone to love her. After witnessing her boyfriend flirting with another girl, they break up, and, for disrupting their performance, her own band kicks her out.
So Deu is sad, alone, and gets very drunk. While in a parking garage, a van pulls up and kidnaps her, but male lead role Patrick Tang, who plays Sanim, is there to save her. He manages to fend off a group of guys who are wearing 3′ stilts that double as pogo sticks with razor sharp blades on them. Very weird to say the least, but nevermind that.
Deu eventually wakes up and finds some comfort in Sanim and his two drunk friends’ company. His friends — literally named Dogsh*t and Pigsh*t — are experts in a form of drunken fighting. Deu wants in, so over the course of what seems like two or three days, she goes from zero skills to master. This style involves drinking tremendous amounts of alcohol and channeling the energy of it to make your fighting style unpredictable — yeah.
Deu and her three friends, plus another fighter (named Bullsh*t, not kidding) eventually team up to tackle the Jaguar Gang in their massively developed lair that is about 500ft underneath the city. They discover the true plot of these bad guys — using the tears of sorrow from these captured women to make the most potent perfume on the market.
Along the way through this bizarre tale, there are several moments where the movie seems to try too hard to get you to care about the characters, their relationships, and their history. Additionally, there is a lot of drama and you’ll find yourself eager to just get to the next fight scene.
That said, I will add that even though the story was bad, the acting was pretty good.
The Fighting
So the story is out there — way, out there. It was hard enough to watch once, but the pacing and the number of overly dramatic scenes make it a film I wouldn’t want to watch again. As for the fighting, of which there is plenty of, it’s not as bad. While certainly very artistic and acrobatic, I didn’t like the choreography all that much because most of the moves were over played. In other words, if you look at the action the person is taking, it’s far less powerful than what the actual effect is. In other words, a lot of the contact looks like very light touches, but the receiver of those blows goes flying off in pain. Now a lot of movies do this, but I thought this undesirable effect was especially amplified here. Additionally, the fighting is so impractical and unrealistic, it’s hard to take it seriously.
That’s not to say the fighting didn’t have its moments, there are some cool sequences, sure. But the overall impression I got from the fighting was that it was mostly for show and not for substance.
On DVD
The DVD version of the film looks and sounds fine, no major complaints. Expect a widescreen image with either Thai or English audio, and support for English (and Spanish I believe) subtitles. There are just a few extra features including:
-Making of (12m) – Director Rashane Limtrakul and some of the cast talk about the movie and working together while many clips from the film are shown.
-Behind the Scenes (10.5m) – A good feature with lots of behind the scenes footage, especially focused on the fight scenes. This feature isn’t narrated, which is fine, and you will get to see how a lot of the fight scenes were done.
-International Trailer (and trailers of other Magnet releases)
That’s what you can expect on the DVD of Raging Phoenix; lets get to the summary…