Thai Teen Movie? Demo Material? Both, It Seems
It took me a while to figure out what direction BKO was taking, and a few times after that, the plot changed in ways I had not foreseen. That’s not a bad thing, but initially I thought it was as a I sat down to watch the film.
The premise is a group of young Thai martial artists who just won a long, 50 team contest. Now, this group of young friends has a chance to make it big in Hollywood, and there is even a pompous American agent on hand to get things started. However, after a night of celebrating, the team (who call themselves Team Fight Club) wake up in the middle of an abandoned urban district. The fellow running the contest, thought to be a director of an art department, as well as their chef from the night before, informs them that they are now a part of a dangerous game. They must rescue one of their team members by navigating through this large abandoned area that is crawling with bad guys. If the ‘contestants’ try to escape, they will be shot. Meanwhile, the American has a few of his gambling friends watching the entire affair on a closed circuit television. Thanks to dozens of cameras that are hooked up throughout the complex, he can get his gambling viewers to bet on all of the fights. Oh, this little event is known as “Levels of Death,” too.
Sound strange? It certainly is, but you’ll keep watching thanks to the fast and furious martial arts combat. This movie seemed like a strange teenage horror film with lots of martial arts action added and just a pinch of comedy, too. Heck, there’s even a love story that develops by the time the movie ends.
I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen a movie quite like BKO, if ever, which is neither meant to compliment nor downplay the film’s quality. I think if anything, the movie tried to do a little too much, especially the silly “Levels of Death” betting game thing — the scenes with “Mr. Snead,” the American, and the gamblers, are painfully generic and hard to watch. Thankfully, the young stars of BKO put on a heck of a show with their high flying martial arts combat, which for a fan of the genre, made it well worth watching.
As I was watching this movie, I couldn’t help but wonder if Rittikrai made this in large part to help get these young talented actors some facetime. In the extra features, one of the main characters, actually the lead role, talks about how it was a dream come true to be the lead role. I think that’s great, and I’m sure his fellow actors agree that this movie was a nice boost to their careers as it really allows them to show off their talents.
Blu-ray Knockout?
BKO is a modern film and as such you would expect it to look and sound great on Blu-ray, and you’d be right. The image quality is on par — no technical issues noted, good clean picture all around. The nature of the movie does not offer need for CG or special effects, so it’s not exactly ‘demo material,’ but the movie looks great nonetheless. Both an English and Thai 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track are included, as well as English and Spanish subtitles.
There are just a few extra features, which include:
-Making Of (14m21, SD) – Some good interviews and production material.
-Behind the Scenes (10m39s, SD) – Similar to the making of feature, with more behind the scenes, including a lot of injuries that happened during filming.
-Trailer (1m33s, HD)
All in all, BKO: Bangkok Knockout is not a bad release — to the summary…