Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Let’s start by closing this one out. If you’re looking for a good movie to watch… and by a good movie we mean one that has competent acting and possess a compelling story that makes sense, then ‘BKO: Bangkok Knockout’ is probably a movie you should avoid. Like the plague. However… if you have to watch one movie this year that has horrible acting and a story that doesn’t even try to make sense… then this is the one. Proof positive that good acting and sense making are highly overrated.

To let you know how worthless this story is I think I’ve forgotten every principle character’s name, except for the chick that plays Joy, even though I just saw this movie yesterday.

Two stunt teams are fighting for the right to be in this American dude’s Hollywood movie. Team A wins. Team A then goes to a party to celebrate this glorious victory, finds that they are drugged and when they wake up they are in an abandoned warehouse and are prisoners of some evil dude called The Doctor. In a remote location the Evil American is holed up with four high stakes bettors as The Doctor informs this team that they are in a play for pay life and death scenario. To keep these guys honest Joy, the one character we remember, has been kidnapped even though she knows how to kick ass too. So our team, which is led by Hero Boy, must fight the brutal team The Doctor hired, which is led by Asthma Guy, with the fate of… nothing really… in the balance.

And… well… that’s pretty much it. But the movie is close to 100 minutes long so that can’t be it, can it? Yup, that’s pretty much it. There’s other stuff but it’s not really important. Hero Boy loves Joy, just like Jilted Guy loves Joy which causes some complications. We have to deal with Comic Relief Gay Violinist Dude an awful lot for some reason, and at the end there’s a subplot involving Hero Boy’s mom and his little sister, but… you know… who cares?

No sir, Panna Rittikrai’s ‘BKO: Bangkok Knockout’ is all about the fight sequences are they are almost all uniformly and amazingly spectacular. The opening fight featuring Super Athletic Dude versus the Tranny? Fantastic. The following Cage Fight with Tiny Athletic Dude versus Cage Crawling Man? Awesome. Older Guy and Second Hot Chick doing battle with Thai Jason Vorhees? Sweet. Hero Boy versus The Ninja-Samurai? With Joy constantly getting in the way? You can’t beat that, plus Hero Boy has these long legs which really lends itself well to the art of Kicking People in the Chest Real Hard.

Then there’s the Battle Royale featuring every character in the movie beating the snot out of each other, followed by Asthma Guy displaying his invincible skills… but he does have one fatal flaw… guess what that is? And there’s the final battle featuring The Doctor v Hero Boy doing battle under a speeding 18-wheeler. Irresponsible, stupid and dangerous? Perhaps. But it is Thailand and I don’t think Thailand has an OSHA department so you cats go ahead and fight under a rolling 18 wheeler.

We’re trying to think of some more words to pad this thing but there really isn’t much more to say in regards to ‘BKO: Bangkok Knockout’. It’s badly acted by pretty much everybody in the movie, including the Evil American who doesn’t fight anybody, so where the stunt actors have a legitimate excuse for their failure to emote… Surely they could’ve found an American floating around on vacation or something that could’ve pulled this off with a little more panache. The story, as we mentioned, is useless, the dialog is inane and the attempts at comedy are painful.

With all that being said, don’t be surprised to see ‘BKO: Bangkok Knockout’ on my Ten Best List at the end of 2011.