thaicoons Reviews

The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure (2022)

If you thought Squid Game was underacted, you'll love this

[3/10 · 3 March 2022]

South Koreans are masters of every genre, they've been making the best movies on the planet for 20 years now. Every genre that is but comedy. Either that or their taste in humor is just different than hours and they prefer physical comedy and facial expressions three notches above what we'd consider too much even in theatre acting. Too bad, since the script isn't terrible and had potential.

Mayor of Kingstown (2021– )

could have been great with better casting

[7/10 · 6 February 2022]

Out of nothing Taylor Sheridan emerged as one of the best creators of our time; Sicario, Yellowstone,1883 and now Mayor of Kingstown. The recipe is a great story, amazing characters, brilliant writing and top notch casting but while 1883 the recipe is executed to perfection, Mayor of suffers from what feels like sloppy casting. The most painful example is Bunny, the leaders of Crips, played by a chubby, likeable actor that just doesn't work as a devious, scheming, heartless murderer, and it doesn't help that Bunny is written as well as some other characters, in this regard Sheridan should have taken a page out of The Wire's playbook.

Midnight (2021)

Ruined by poor writing

[4/10 · 15 January 2022]

A decent outing by the guy playing the villain but overall the script is just bad, it's not just the holes, the level of stupidity of the characters is probably insulting to the deaf of South Korea, their police force and society in general. The suspension of disbelief has its limits and this movie is crossing the line all the time.

Besa (2018– )

Season 2 just as great but lacking payoff

[9/10 · 2 January 2022]

Besa has been setting new standards for Serbian crime genre and season 2 doesn't disappoint with writing, acting, production quality and overall storytelling but it looks as if they ran a couple of episodes short as there's no real denouement, so many Chekhov's guns throughout the story that don't get off, it's as if the entire S2 were a set up for a climactic S3. Which is warmly welcome but no payoff leaves a bit of a bitter taste.

Besa (2018– )

Phenomenal

[9/10 · 13 December 2021]

There's been a bunch of solid Serbian drama series in recent years, Grupa, 12 reci, Kosti, Drzavni sluzbenik itd., but Besa is something else, very few shows on Netflix and Amazon combine are as raw, as gripping and as well made in every regard. Sure, it's not Succession level of writing and production but in terms of pure storytelling it's outstanding, a must watch.

Squid Game (2021– )

Great potential ruined by overacting

[6/10 · 18 September 2021]

Korean TV shows are traditionally a step below their movies, which have been the best in the world for a while now. With its budget, production quality and talent Squid Game could have been the one show that got away but all is sadly ruined by Lee Jung-jae overacting pretty much every scene he's in, he just doesn't seem to be able to ground his character. Granted, some of the writing is over the top too, which doesn't help but the director should have helped him calibrate. In comparison Gong Yoo and especially Lee Byung-hun own the screen and ooze charisma every single time despite very brief appearances.

It's still a good show and overall quite watchable but it's just not great.

Rurangi (2020– )

a heart warming tale of transition done right

[9/10 · 18 June 2021]

So our hero has transitioned but we've all been there, what makes this one different is he's returning to his hometown, a community with traditional family values, to be an activist for social justice and raise awareness about the ins and outs of transitioning to in the area. His father, whom he hasn't seen since the whole thing started, is not impressed. Perhaps not the next Odyssey but a decent production showing us that diversity is our greatest strength.

Porodica (2021– )

terrible directing, some poor casting too

[4/10 · 4 April 2021]

Serbia has given us several outstanding TV series in recent years so it was natural with a story as captivating as Milosevic' arrest there'd be great expectations. Sadly, they remain unfulfilled, the show kicks off with an amateurish intro and never quite picks up. Some of the acting is not bad and make up looks top notch but despite loads of regional star power the whole thing just doesn't grab the viewer. Too bad, with a bit of extra work on the script and more competent direction it could have been much better.

Kosti (2020)

The best Serbian show ever

[10/10 · 20 December 2020]

Speechless. It starts kinda slow as it sets the scene but once it reels you in, it's high revs till the end. The writing, the casting, the acting, the music, the cinematography, this show is just next level in more ways than one, amazing work.

Klan (2020– )

Unfulfilled potential

[4/10 · 6 December 2020]

A fan of Serbian crime series of late, they've been producing quality content in recent years at least on par with what an average Netflix show has to offer and as a rule what made up for lower budgets and lack of international star power was top notch writing, modern directing and amazing acting talent Serbia seems to have. Not much of that in Klan, though, it has a weak script, unimaginative directing and while some acting is semi decent, the two leads are poorly cast, they lack the charisma and screen presence to pull off a crime saga, especially working with such poor material. Too bad, Klan's been hyped almost as Serbian Gangs of Wasseypur, a thinly veiled biopic of the notorious Zemun clan responsible for the assassination of the prime minister of Serbia in 2003. Best skipped.

Most Dangerous Game (2020–2023)

God awful

[16 October 2020]

If it didn't have Hemsworth and Waltz in it, this'd be a 3.9 star rated low budget it is, the star power is making people rate it much too high. It's not just the plot holes, like wouldn't the hero plan his last day on Earth a little better, maybe scout locations, pick those with best odds of survival rather than run off at random? The biggest problem this movie has, they spent so much on the two big guns they couldn't afford decent villains so we're stuck with hopelessly cast sub par actors and to make it even worse, the villains are just bad. The icing on the cake is the Quibi format, it just kills what little cinematic pleasure there might be left. Best skipped and forgotten about.

Mocvara (2020– )

Watchable low budget Serbian noir

[8/10 · 4 October 2020]

Reviewers here seem to be potraying Mocvara as low fi True Detective, seems unfair. Obviously a show as successful as TD will influence subsequent works but this one can stand on its own two feet with a decent plot. Sure, the sound production is terrible but in the age of radical political correctness it's just refreshing to see a show where everyone smokes, where men are men and women are women and where cops still beat bad guys up to exact justice.

Shanghai Gypsy (2012)

Surprisingly good

[8/10 · 21 September 2020]

Shocked to see a movie as good as this doesn't have a single review, especially since it's so easily available. Is it is good as Wasseypur or Dom za Vesanje, maybe not, but it's a delightful movie with strong international cast, some amazing acting, great visuals, gorgeous soundtrack, all in all arguably the best and certainly most entertaining movie ever to come from Slovenia. It also elegantly solves the language problem that plagues most Slovenian movies, switching between Roma, Italian and a charming local dialect gives it authenticity. Well done, Marko Nabersnik.

The Mongolian Connection (2019)

Quite decent actually

[7/10 · 20 September 2020]

As we all know, American cinema has been pretty much dead for a while now, killed by greedy studios, boring franchise sequels and political correctness. So we're forced to look elsewhere, to South Korea in particular, but Mongolians, whoever saw that coming? This movie is low budget, has no star power and while not too original, it's competently directed and edited and the end result is surprisingly watchable and better overall than most non American crime thrillers. And American ones for that matter, if we leave out Dragged Across Concrete.

Steel Rain 2 (2020)

Steel Rain 2 - Who let the dogs out

[5/10 · 23 August 2020]

I'm a huge fan of South Korean cinema and can appreciate cultural differences but Steel Rain 2: Summit is just garbage, complete and utter garbage. A harebrained geopolitical scheme with stereotypical characters and below average acting. But what really ruins this movie is the portrayal of the American president. I have no problem with Trump being mocked, I can understand the sentiment, but the US president in Steel Rain 2 is a pitiful, uninspired Trump caricature that adds nothing to the story arc, it has no comedic relief function, it's just burlesque, in the middle of a movie otherwise trying to be a serious political thriller, everyone else is trying to infuse gravitas in their lines, with varying success. It's like if Thirteen Days had Jerry Lewis scenes sprinkled on it, unwatchable. Let's just hope Deliver Us From Evil lives up to the hype, Steel Rain 2: The Summit is as bad as they come and when you're about half way in even the title assumes a different, lowbrow comedy connotation.

Ayla: The Daughter of War (2017)

Horrible fluff

[3/10 · 9 August 2020]

As a huge fan of Turkish cinema I tend to give all Turkish movies a 10, that's just how we roll in Turkey but I guess living in the West inifidel ways are rubbing on me and I'm starting to feel that maybe we shouldn't be misleading international movie community and treat others the way we'd like to be treated. So for this one, I'm calling it the way I see it, it's dreadful, overly emotional fluff with poor directing and acting that's common in Turkish movies but is probably perceived as a bit premodern elsewhere. Best skipped unless you're really aching for a Turkish movie about the Korean war.

Breakthrough (2019)

the sunny side of war crimes

[2/10 · 4 July 2020]

A weird picture that on some specialized sites somehow got mixed in with proper good South Korean production. It seems to want to offer a new take on Eastern European partisans during WW2. The rag tag communist paramilitaries are usually known for blind adherence to ideology, robbing poor farmers and war crimes but here they're trying to tell us they also had a human side so they're shown performing a series of mundane and, for the viewer, increasingly boring tasks such as mending socks, cooking soup or reading books. A bit of action is then thrown in, with the obligatory flame throwing Nazis but it all falls flat. I understand the movie had a meagre budget but that's no excuse for stereotypical characters, dull dialogue and wooden acting, all in all it has the air of amateurism written all over it, best skipped.

Giri/Haji (2019)

Ruined by bad casting

[4/10 · 21 May 2020]

It's not an uninteresting show but like many these days it's ruined by poor casting decisions. Not even the criminals are believable in this one and good criminals are the key, it's not enough to just take a guy and slap some fake tattoos on him. I mean c'mon, the Yakuza, the homosexual, the American mafia son, the black hit girl, the British mafia overlord, not even the extras look like they belong, they just look ike extras.

Devs (2020)

interesting concept ruined by terrible casting

[6/10 · 18 April 2020]

Devs is typical Alex Garland, innovative, interesting story, competent directing but the casting is just unbelievable, it's almost as if they chose on purpose the blandest of mediocre actors with the least charisma, it defies reason, better actors could have propelled Devs to amazing heights. The lead has already been commented on, most people seem to agree she was a poor choice but it's not just her, the entire Dev team is one bizarre, ridiculous choice of actor after another, Sergei was just as bad, even the spies are boring, which you probably have to work hard at to make happen, uncanny really. Granted, some of the lines in the show are cliches, the black Dev guy's for instance, but the dialogue between the Russian handler and Amaya's head of security, with a different couple of actors it could have been the stuff of legends. Even the extras look selected for non-descript, grey mouse, uncharismatic screen presence, or lack thereof. All in all, the story does grip you overall but the actors, every single on of them, are a bitter pill to swallow.

The Wandering Earth (2019)

Kinda spectacular but boring overall

[5/10 · 2 May 2019]

CGI is obviously there and with the background of snowy landscape it should look amazing but somehow doesn't, space shots are better but as much as I despise current Hollywood, when it comes to CGI they're still the best, case in point Deadpool.

The biggest weak point of TWE is the plot, characters just aren't strong enough to propel the story forward and at least to a Western eye it's sometimes easy to get confused who's who. What doesn't help is lame attempts at comedic relief that plague most Asian movies, even South Koreans, who have been making by far the best movies for the last 10-15 years suffer from this, but I digress.

Is the TWE watchable, I guess, but does it grab the viewer, not at all, it fails to let the audience establish an emotional connection with the protagonists and the rest of the story just isn't strong enough.

Obviously with imdb being so ethnocentric the Chinese with their numbers will push the ratings up but in reality this movie doesn't deserve more than a 5 or 6, it's light years away from masterpieces like Gravity or The Martian.

No wonder South Koreans aren't even attempting space sci-fi, they're superb in making other genres, say zombie flicks or thrillers and they stick to what they're good at, perhaps the Chinese should follow their suit and stick to kung fu movies, they made some of the best ones in history.

Revenger (2018)

Great fight scenes, otherwise subpar

[6/10 · 19 January 2019]

It's no secret that the best movies in the last decade or so have been coming from South Korea, The Yellow Sea, Memories of Murder, Burning, New World, The Chaser, I Saw The Devil or Sea Fog to name just a few. Koreans have managed to take every genre and make it original and above all, better. Every genre that is, except comedy, for some reason their and Asian comedies in general still continue to be situational rather than character-based, poorly written and overacted. Revenger is no exception, characters thrown in for comedic relief are cartoonish in the bad sense of the word, it's quite cringey, to tell the truth. The action scenes, however, are world class, superbly coreographed, played and shot. It's not a ground-breaking like The Raid 2 but it's very competent and a joy to watch. Is Revenger worth watching, by all means, it's a fun vendetta movie but there was potential for greatness there, with better characters and more polished comedy parts, Revenger could have been a masterpiece.

Father Figures (2013)

Moral dilemma

[7/10 · 25 March 2017]

It's not a bad movie for such a low budget and for anyone who's ever been to SE Asia, it will ring the familiar bells of moral dilemmas one faces when choosing to interfere in the lives of people there. Dale is a creep, no doubt, but is it really so wrong and unexpected for a 75-year old guy, who never achieved anything of note in his life, to lie to his fiancée about having been a millionaire? Or to have sex with the girl for that matter. The age of consent in The Phillipines is 12 years and Girlie is a very convincing 24-year old. If sex was OK 5 minutes ago, when April thought she was 24, how can it become so very inappropriate when she turns out to be 17 and 3/4? Would it be OK again 2 months later when she turned 18?

It's painful to watch at times, no one likes to see adolescent girls essentially sold to old white men, but non-European cultures look at relationships in a much more transactional way, much more so than we did before the idea of forever lasting romantic love took over. Girlie's family really does live, as April puts it, a step away from hunger, there's no dignity in being poor and hungry and having a white husband in the family, albeit old, really is a status symbol among the poor and uneducated Filipinos, Thais or Khmer.

They are naive, obviously, there are few white knights in shining armor in the slums and villages of SE Asia, but if it makes life better for two people, even if only for a while, what moral right does anyone saying what's right and what isn't, let alone forcing his or her views on them.

Main Aur Charles (2015)

The Charles Sobhraj story. Again. Worse than ever.

[12 January 2016]

After a TV series or two and a documentary or two, the infamous Charles Sobhraj on the big screen. His story is certainly interesting and the TV series from the 1980s managed to translate his reported hypnotic charisma on the screen, as far as they could go in the 80's of course. And this is this movie's first problem, that when it tries to convey the atmosphere of the 1970's, it fails to do that but rather gives it the look of made-for-TV cinematography from the 80's. It's bad, really bad and poor acting doesn't help. I couldn't make it past the 30 minute mark. The director and the cameraman should go study modern Korean cinema to see how to pull off period atmosphere while still using modern cinematography technology and techniques.

Which brings me to a question; what is it with people from India and rating movies? Why do you keep giving Indian movies unrealistically high scores? With more reviewers they somewhat come down but it's still not realistic and there's no by nationality breakdown in the stats. You act as if it's somehow unpatriotic to give a movie from one's own country a bad score. It's not.

For those interested in Sobhraj I recommend Neville's book.

Hellstorm (2015)

A view from the other side

[7 January 2016]

Since Hitler - The Greatest Story Never Told filled in some major gaps in the dominant narrative of WW2 as a battle of good of evil in which strangely enough the winners, the good guys, are such champions of liberty and human rights as Stalin or Mao, which has to make one wonder about the moral of that tale, this is now a historical overview of the events during the allied invasions and the immediate post-war period. It's very hard to watch, even if one still sees the Nazi Germans as cartoonish characters bent on world domination. Nothing justifies mass raping, killing and pillaging, yet is is exactly the kind of justice the victors dispensed on traumatised civilian population. German POWs fared even worse, ending up in concentration camps in Poland and as slaves in Siberian gulags.

The world is not monochromatic, that much should be clear and it seems to be a moral imperative for every thinking person to learn the alternative views of history and then do his homework to see what historically checks or does not, but we should definitely not be taking Soviet post WW2 propaganda at face value.

Wasteland (2012)

Generic but watchable, not the best casting ever, though

[18 October 2014]

The Rise isn't bad, considering the low budget and actors most of us have never seen perform before. The plot is coherent and acting on par but casting was very poor. It's probably due to financial reasons but these people, lead included, just don't have the character and cinematic presence that we've gotten used to see in British movies.

I have utmost respect for British TV and cinema production but bearing in mind the excellence of especially Korean, but also Chinese and even Indonesian or Filipino movies these days, The Rise just doesn't make the cut to invets one's 90 minutes in when one has so many brilliant TV shows and movies to choose from.