Remade as: Bangkok Dangerous
The Hong Kong-based Pang brothers (Danny and Oxide) made their writing/directing debut with this 2000 thriller made in Thailand. Here, a veteran hitman named Jo takes under his wing a deaf-mute man named Kong who is a crack marksman but can’t hear his own shots. (Jo’s stripper girlfriend, Aom, helps Kong guide his shots.) Kong also falls in love with a pharmacist, Fom, who helps him feel like less of an outcast, but happy endings are hard to come by in his line of work.
The 2008 remake of the same name, also directed by the Pangs and filmed on location in Bangkok, stars Nicolas Cage as Joe and has little of the subtlety or pathos of the original. (In the remake, it’s the pharmacist who’s deaf, and it’s Joe she falls for – and fails to redeem.)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGtoG5BnW_g]