Mercury Man

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.

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.

Good basic story with obvious differences if made in America. Improved "Production Value" would have helped the distribution, worldwide!

Note: The Charlton Comic Book Character "Mercury Man" and all the characters of the Mercury Man Adventures in the comics of the early '60's is now owned, copyrights and Trademarked by Producer, Tommy G Warren & Spiderwood Franchise!

Development plans are in the works to publish a new and up-dated Comic Book, then go into animation and live action productions for TV and possibly Motion Pictures.

Mercury Man and his Robotic friend, "Zoom" are from a far away Galaxy of Mercury and was forced to earth when their space craft malfunctioned after being hit by a Meteorite. He has taken on a human Comic friend, Dr. Erika Penn.

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.

Mercury Man (2006) is a Thai movie I recently watched on Tubi. The storyline follows a fireman who comes into contact with a strange substance while putting out a fire. He transforms into a super hero and finds himself fighting crime as a vigilante when he isn't fighting fires...

This movie is directed by Bhandit Thongdee (The Unborn) and stars Libby Brien (Don't Close Your Blinds), Philip Hersh (Red Cliff), Metinee Kingpayome (Province 77) and Anon Saisangcharn (The Second Site).

The best part of this movie are the women fight scene, particularly at the beginning and end. The dialogue and acting is terrible. The special effects are pretty crazy and many scenes feel like you're watching a bad Spider-Man movie. The super hero elements are not done well but most of the hand to hand combat scenes are entertaining.

Overall this is a below average addition to the action genre that I would score a 4/10 and recommend skipping.