Mercury Man

At the time of its release, MERCURY MAN, Thailand's first foray into the superhero genre was one of the more expensive movies ever made in the country, but it's dismal box office performance there didn't bode well for its producers' hopes that it would "go international" or have the box-office muscle of Sam Raimi's SPIDERMAN, the film it's most obviously been modelled on, right down to the lead character's sinewy-rubbery costume, which can be easily duplicated in a computer for those dazzling flights of fancy across urban landscapes.

The film is flawed enough that it probably never stood a chance of cracking the international market anyways. Glossy production values aside--and they're often rare in Thai cinema--there's a weird sense that the whole thing is some kind of thinly-veiled propaganda.

After having part of a mystical "Solar Mercury" amulet embedded in his chest, a hot-shot fireman (Vasan Kantha-u) must learn to control his temper (in a country known for silencing dissent, no less, not to mention alienating religious minorities) if he's to defeat not only various hooligans around the city, but also a small band of Muslim extremists led by a dude named "Usama" who bears a rather unfortunate resemblance to Richard Lynch in the Chuck Norris classic INVASION U.S.A.

The terrorists need the amulet, paired with it's sister--the "Lunar Mercury"--to aid their plans to attack the literal and symbolic American interests around the country (Helloooo, massive McDonald's & Hard Rock Cafe product placements!!). Interestingly, the film features a little boy with psychic powers who opens the film by demonstrating his ability to stop a stopwatch at will. Funny that they'd need a scene like that...

For the money the filmmakers spent (which still wasn't much by American standards), everything looks pretty good, but the computer effects are hobbled on occasion by a clear misunderstanding of the laws of physics on the part of their creators, such as those that would govern the car Mercury Man kicks into a billboard, where it becomes stuck rather than crashing through! Yes, I know it's a fantasy, and I can accept Mercury Man's metal-based powers allowing him to "fly" between metal objects without the aid of machinery or ropes or webs, but billboards can't stop cars! The cast is generally quite dull, but I've come to expect that in Thai cinema. Pretty faces, but not much expression, including the ones Mercury Man's boyish alter ego must suppress for fear of catching on fire, as his crotch nearly does when he cops a few glances at a Penthouse magazine tucked away in his drawer.

The action choreography, by Prachya Pinkaew and his ONG BAK/TOM YUM GOONG team, are the main reasons this is watchable, but there's a certain recycled feeling about them now, with only the more expensive costuming and modern-looking locations differentiating them from those seen in the earlier Tony Jaa films and virtually everything else that Pinkaew has touched to date. On top of that, there's one hell of a lot editing going on in these sequences. Every connected blow is followed by an immediate cut to a closeup or a long shot, which tends to make you wonder just how many stunt doubles are being disguised with every splice. Fans of BEAUTIFUL BOXER, the life story of trans-gender Muay Thai boxer Parinya Charoenphon, might enjoy watching her, largely undoubled it would seem, kick the snot out a batch of evildoers in white lab shirts.

And the final fight between Mercury Man and the villain's right hand babe, who's absorbed the power of the Lunar Mercury amulet, is worth watching for any number of reasons, notably the latter's transformation into a semi-naked frost warrior.

Though undoubtedly intended as an A-list picture in its homeland, and indeed, with its slick visuals and breezy pace, feeling and looking much more like one in comparison to a lot of the sloppily made crap that passes for populist cinema there, MERCURY MAN is nonetheless best viewed with lowered expectations, particularly if you aren't familiar with Thai cinema, otherwise you'll inevitably be tempted to actually compare it to the American superhero films it so brazenly dares you to.

I saw this at our local electronics shop that buys movies and thought it would just be a fun "kung fu" action flick. Well, they got the "kung fu" part... kinda.

It started off simple enough with a number of setups for plot points later in the movie, so don't be surprised when you're easily able to predict what will happen.

The problem I had with this movie is not that it's a ripoff of Spiderman, but that nothing in the plot made any sense. The main character, Chan, is imbued with powers from a magical space amulet that makes him get really overheated when he gets excited and burns off his clothes. You would think they would have gone with a Human Torch kind of character, but his powers are the ability to control metal objects. There is another that is supposed to be a moon stone, but it gives you ice powers. When these elements are combined, you get Captain Pl... err, I mean, you get a nuclear bomb. The main antagonist is Usama Bin Ali (bet you can't guess who he's supposed to be) and he's upset at America and wants to destroy a US boat carrying bombs (that we never actually see) with a nuclear bomb made from the magic rocks that will kill everyone in Thailand (I think they're in Thailand). I don't mind when a movie wants to have a message, but you have a super hero battling terrorists, you lose something. The whole terrorist (movie) plot just seems forced and I don't understand why a movie base in an Asian country with Asian actors/inhabitants would have such a heavily influenced Middle Eastern agenda. I am certainly no geography or history major, but to me it makes no sense at all and it makes the message confusing. Was the director anti-American or anti-terrorist? They didn't even have a real supervillain for Chan to fight.

After Chan gets his powers and continually asking for more exposition to understand what's going on because us, the watchers, wouldn't have a clue without it, goes around the city to fight crime. He stops such daring criminals like a drunk driver by throwing the driver and his car into the air and crashing him into a billboard, he ends a very slow police car chase by smashing the car and probably killing everyone inside, and even stops a couple of "evil" elephants on a rampage... that only started rampaging because of some kid with psychic powers.

Oh, you didn't know about the kid with psychic powers? Yeah, there's this kid with psychic powers that can control your mind, bend gun barrels, move things without touching them... it's a plot point that is never used properly. The bad guys have him in their possession and the only thing they use him for is to find the boat they want to destroy. Seems like a lot of wasted potential.

The movie attempts to be all philosophical and completely fails at it. There is one scene where a random monk tells Chan that "to control your body, you must control your mind, then you can control your body". They also keep throwing this whole "you must contain the fires in your heart" kind of messages. I get what they were going for, but I don't think the writers understood the message they were trying to convey. They also try to string things together that have no business being strung together, like when they try to explain that Chan's powers can be nullified with electricity because the magic stone doesn't like honey. No, I am not making that up. The stone is apparently alive and if you feed it honey, it becomes docile. The honey has enzymes and therefore has the same properties as electricity. It makes total sense.

A lot of the dubbing isn't that good, they tried to do their best and that's fine, but you can really tell they just didn't know what to say in a lot of cases. The newscasters are especially bad.

The fight scenes are just ok, it's nothing you haven't seen before and there's a lot of use of wires and suspension rigs to make the actors move in ways they physically cannot. This isn't a bad thing, but you can really tell when the actors are on wires. That being said, it won't matter much because you can't usually see what's happening anyway. The way they cut the fight scenes will drive you crazy. Nearly every fight scene only shows about a second of footage before cutting to another angle, so you never really get to see them fight. Not all of them are this way, but the majority are cut too fast to really enjoy it.

Costumes and outfits are fine, again, nothing special. The look of the girl who takes on the moon stone was decent, though you could tell she was wearing a sports bra and panties (not that I expect her to be naked, but you can tell she's just wearing clothes, would have been better with a full body suit).

The CG work isn't good, but considering when this came out and where it was released, I'll give it a pass.

Overall, it's not really a good movie, it's not really a bad movie, it just exists and isn't really worth the watch unless you just want to be bored.

This film is the best superhero film ever I've seen... it's even far ahead of the dark knight (lmao)...the director's vision is much powerful than any American director...he made a movie that even Christopher Nolan can't do(lol)...my rating for this extraordinary film is 100/10.

I was going into this hoping for a so-bad-its-good type movie, but for the most part it's just plain old bad. There are some of the ridiculous moments I was hoping for, like the horrific CGI superhero rescuing people, random atomic artifacts that give superpowers or blow up, and out-of-left-field plot contrivances, but they are rather sparse in a movie that is essentially Thai Magneto vs. Osama Bin Laden. It drags badly in several places to the point that my friend and I were seriously considering just turning it off, but every time it would drag us back in with a slow motion leap over a random couch or the hero sliding down a rope from the top floor of a burning building on his fire axe. In the end, though, I wouldn't recommend it. If you're looking for a movie to take seriously, this one has too many CGI, plot, and dialogue problems. If you're looking for a fun bad movie, it doesn't have enough of them. It's stranded in that limbo between good and bad that is worse than either. If about an hour of plot dialogue had been cut out of this nearly two hour movie, it would be decent, but as it stands, it's not worth your time. If you're looking for a good bad superhero movie, Condorman or Return of Captain Invincible are better. If you're looking for a good Thai martial arts movie, stick with Tony Jaa. Either way, stay away from this one.

I hate giving movies low ratings. Makes me feel like one of those professionals who bash movies. In fact if a movie is bad, I don't write reviews. But I had to write one for this movie.

Story was absolutely, needlessly, mind numbingly bad. I guess they couldn't decide on what plot to make the movie on. There's everything in this movie from thugs to terrorists who not only hate thailand but the whole world.

The movie had a budget of 60 million baht ($1.6 million), which is quite a lot for their currency. I guess they spend most of the budget on the fx. All the FX redering was very well done considering the budget. Probably the only positive thing in the movie.

The director mentioned that the goal of the movie was to appeal to the international movie audience. Well..... FX isn't just enough to appeal to audience. With FX one needs good acting. "Good Acting" this movie does not have. Even if you are watching this movie in thai, you can tell that the actors are quite bad.

The movie's crew involved a lot of people from the crew of Ong-Bak and Tom Yum Goom. Ong-Bak was good. Tom Yum Goom sucked but Mercury Man is better than that. Maybe their next movie will be better.