Antapal

Mind-blowing Thai film, that concerns a gangster with a moral conscious and a delicate side to his character (haunted by a ghost of a girl, he accidentally shoots dead). Set at the time of Elvis, it's moving, beautiful, brutal and at times, like a savage explosion! It plays like a cross between 'American Graffiti' and 'Scarface'! Right now like many other Thai and Korean films, it simply blows anything made by the western world and watched three times as inflight entertainment (on the way to Thailand). Magnificent in every department, like on the edge of my plane seat!

I knew nothing of the film when I saw it and it was a good surprise. Sure the storyline is messy and full of holes, and it is difficult to understand what is going on and why, especially in the first part. But the film is full of energy, action and the actors are great. Krisada Sukosol Clapp makes a great action hero ; he is both scary and touching, making his character deeply human. Apart from being a gangster movie, it is too a historical film of epic proportion; a lot of work went into the recreation of the 1950s and 1960s. I don't know if the depiction of Bangkok in the fifties is historically accurate, but it a interesting to see those gangsters with Elvis, James Dean as heroes and rock and roll everywhere. True or not we believe this vision of the past and of Thailand's history. Not to be missed if you are a fan of gangster films!

I must say that I found the first half of this film to be fairly boring. Nothing interesting, lots of characters bouncing around without much depth, and an odd inclusion of what seemed to be interviews with real (?) people that made it almost seem like part documentary. The second half, however, is where I found myself interested. The plot picks up and interesting events start to occur. This biggest issue, however, is that the film lacks focus. Never does it feel like the film has a 100% concrete main character. We see different characters and stories, and I felt it made the film unnecessarily confusing. It would have been amazing if there was a definitive central character. Some may say the character Jod was the central character, but I felt the film bounced around a little too much for that to be true. If the first half had been like the second, and Jod had been more of the focus of the film, I think this would be an amazing movie, but as it stands now, it's only enjoyable.