Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Well that was… ambitious. I guess this is what we can say about visionary director Nonzee Nimbutr’s film ‘Queens of Langkasuka’. We aren’t going to call this film by its western release title ‘Tsunami Warrior’ because the mentioning of tsunami’s right now makes me very sad. But back to Mr. Nibutr’s very ambitious film, if for some unknown reason Nonzee Nimbutr were to have called me up during the planning stages of his epic movie, I would’ve read his script and probably recommended that he be just a tad less epic and a little less ambitious. Far be it for me to stifle a man’s vision and his creativity, but this is what I would’ve recommended.

To call the narrative in this movie ‘unwieldy’ would be the understatement of the decade but it does make sense if you pay really, really close attention.

Lim Kium (Jakkrit Phanichphatikram) is the assistant to a Dutch weapons master when the ship carrying the masters amazing super cannons is ambushed by pirates and destroyed with the cannons descending to the bottom of the sea and the Dutchman dying with his creations. Lim Kium survives the explosion and also rescues a young boy named Pari in the process. Hell if I know where that boy came from.

Pari’s uncle wants the young boy to learn the secrets of the martial art of du lum since the boy seems to have an innate ability for the craft, but du lum master White Ray (Sorrapong Chatree) can feel the Dark Side in this one and refuses to train him because he fears that the powers will be used for destruction. Whatever old man, the uncle trains the boy himself.

So this boy grows up (Ananda Everingham) and uses his powers to help his rebel uncle fight this Evil Prince, his right hand man the evil Dul Lum master Black Raven and their host of evil pirates. Across town this same Evil Prince is attempting to conquer the kingdom of Langkasuka led by queen Haiju (Jarunee Suskawat) with help from her daughters, I think, Princess Ungu (Anna Ris) and Princess Biru (Jacqueline Apithanonon). Princess Ungu, a righteous warrior in her own right, is upset because

she’s is being forced into marriage of alliance with Prince Pahang (Jesdaporn Poldhee) even though he’s really nice and honorable dude. Leading the forces of Langkasuka is the mighty warrior Lord Jahang who sports a gold mask to hide his scars after taking one for the team a few years back. I think he and Princess Biru dig each other but she’s royalty and he’s the help so you know how those things are.

These evil pirates don’t appreciate the rebels killing them so they strike back hard at the rebels village killing everybody, even the kids, stealing the women, raping them and then tossing them into the sea. Not cool. One of these women would’ve been Pari’s beautiful bride. He’s really angry now. And just as White Ray predicted, considering he was using his gifts to cause a ruckus, the ruckus has come back on him and now the darkness is taking over.

A WHOLE lot of other stuff is going on but somehow Princess Ungu and Pari the warrior get stuck on the island of White Ray during monsoon season and love will kind of blossom. In a way. White Ray has to help Pari conquer the blackness and accept the light, Langkasuka is under attack, the warriors of Langkasuka will take to the skies… it’s complicated… and a Big Blue Whale will save us all. Or something. I’m not completely sure.

True enough, ‘Queens of Langkasuka’ possesses about as convoluted a narrative as any movie I’ve ever seen, but like I said earlier it’s not so convoluted to the point of being completely incomprehensible, but considering how the screenwriters took such great pains to attempt to link all of the actions and the virtual army or characters in some sort of way, if you blink you are going to definitely miss something that was probably important. This guy is related to that guy who is this guys nephew which explains why that guy is a traitor to this guy who is that guys father. It’s a lot like that only way more jumbled up. And for a movie that’s an action adventure for the most part, the focus should probably be on the action and the adventure and less on trying to decipher the complex family tree structure that is infused in this story.

It’s too bad because the action and the adventure is actually pretty good. There’s lots of martial arts action, some ninjas drop in to party for a little while, there’s plenty of explosions and killings and murders and stingray surfing. Yes, the movie is derivative of a few timeless classics that came before it, and this also doesn’t do it any favors, but for what is, as far as the action on screen goes, it’s not too bad.

The last issue is that we had the misfortune of watching the English dub which is simply awful. It appears that the Thai language has a completely different intonation than the English language so to match the lip sync there are these unnatural gaps and pauses in the way the voice actors had to speak. For example, instead of saying ‘Don’t make me kill you!’, the voice actors to make it lip sync would have to say ‘Don’t… make me… kill… you’, and it’s like that throughout the entire movie which was a little distracting.

Still, I kind of liked ‘Queens of Langkasuka’. It’s an unwieldy convoluted mess, that’s for sure, but there is arguably enough action, mayhem and swashbuckling to counter this convolution overload. Emphasis on the word ‘arguable’