Killer Tattoo

Killer Tattoo comes burdened with extravagant praise, but this Thai film often seems just a few steps behind the goofy HK actioners it attempts to emulate.

When a career criminal is released from prison, he's asked to orchestrate the killing of a high ranking politico. He pulls together a strange crew to help him out: a pill-popping druggie, a droopy- eyed longhair, and a guy who thinks he's Elvis, and refuses to speak Thai. It's a promising setup, but most of the intentional jokes fall flat, while the unintentional ones (including some pointed jibes at the U.S.) pack more bite. There are gunfights galore, but they're orchestrated without much snap or style, and the frequent John Woo--like intrusions of melodrama tend to slow down the action.

Killer Tattoo is certainly offbeat, but being offbeat isn't enough to inject spunk into this poorly paced actioner.

Pae Buffgun, Er M16, Dog and Ghost Rifle are a shambolic group of offbeat assassins who botch a hit on tough Chief of Police, Iron Man. Kit Silencer is the top hit-man who finishes the job, but whose main concern is finding the tattooed killer of his mother 15 years previously.

This great comedy actioner is pure entertainment from start to finish; what other film do you know that features a Thai Elvis-impersonating killer packing a gun in a guitar case, a hippy killer who sees the ghost of his dead wife when making a hit and a sexy female assassin who could shoot the wings off a gnat at 100 yards, AND still have the balls to kill off a few of the main characters before the end credits roll.

Yes... Killer Tattoo is one weird film, mixing as it does extreme violence and light comedy in equal doses – but it works, and it works well.

And it stars Petchtai Wongkamlao, Humlae from Ong-Bak - reason enough to check this one out!!!

Twenty years after this Thai action comedy was released I had the chance to sit down and watch it. I found the movie by random luck, and opted to give it a go, since I hadn't already seen it. And I figured as the movie had Petchtai Wongkamla on the cast list, it couldn't be all bad.

But it was.

It was just so difficult to get into the groove of this movie. The storyline just failed to connect with me and I found very little enjoyment or entertainment in this movie.

The characters in the movie just felt random and very chaotic, and again it was hard to connect with these characters as they were essentially as interesting as wet cardboard.

Sure, there were a fair amount of action in the movie, but with the lack of a properly interesting and pseudo-coherent storyline, then the action could do only so much for the movie.

"Killer Tattoo" was a swing and a miss from director Yuthlert Sippapak, and it was by no means a glorious or memorable moment in Thai action cinema.

I am rating "Killer Tattoo" a generous two out of ten stars.

This movie is quite a classic. I saw it last year the Seattle international film festival and it was just brilliant. It was one of the best comedy action movies I have ever seen.

I really enjoyed the weird Thai humour all through this movie and even through the plot was relatively predictable the characters in the movie and the acting made it trully worth seeing.

I recently saw this action comedy from Thailand at the St. Louis International Film Festival and It knocked on me on my rear end, this film was one wild, unpredictable movie, take John Woo, Wong Kar Wai, Wong Jing and throw them all in the blender at full speed to blend them for a movie that will hit you like a swallow of beer after a shot of sake.

To simply slap this film with the action comedy label is doing it a great injustice because this is not a by the numbers Hollywood cookie style "action comedy" that would ever be made in Tinseltown and probably would be consumed by the mainstrea m moviegoer, it it just too complex for such a simple pigeonhole categorization. This has to be one of the more unpredictable films to come around in a long time and it reminds of the movies that Hong Kong used to make back in their "golden age" in the late 80's to the mid 90's that was my antidote to the Hollywood actioners that just simply rehashed cliche after cliche without much style or imagination. It even the evil foreigner cannon villian just like the Hong Kong action films so a Hong Kong action buff should feel at home. This film has a frantic pace that never lets up and like some of John Woo's best work, will you leave exhausted when it's over. I was just amazed at how the film would change tone so seamlessly, mixing off the comedy, violent action, and touching drama and sometimes one scene would juggle all three going at once, never dropping the ball once.

The film is basically about a hitman, Kit Silencer looking searching for the man who killed his mother when he was a child, who had a pitch forked shaped tattoo on his wrist and what happens when he crosses paths with a group of four other bumbling hitmen at a botched hit on a police chief. One of the four losers is an Elvis impersonator who carries an M-16 in his guitar case and that character alone made it worth the price of admission.

Even though this isnt a pure action movie per say, it still has a high body count, higher than some of the so-called action movies and takes chances where say a Hong Kong lite Hollywood homogenized product like Charile's Angels wouldnt in switching genres, allowing some of its main characters to get killed off.

The only problem with this movie, is unless you see it at a film festival you will probably not see it with English subtitles although it is available on DVD and VCD it doesn't have English subtitles which is a shame because I saw a lesser thai action comedy which didnt deserve an English subtitled release in my opinion. I hope Thailand will continue making movies like this and Dang Bireley, Im just glad that there are more world class films available from a country that I and many others alike thought never made movies.