Great thread! TS,
Personal Comment : Soundtrack of this movie is very popular in bkk malls and its constantly playing, right now even playing while I am typing away this review at the free hotspot , near my apartment here in Ratchada. It's an interesting movie and the posters are very provocative.I have yet to watch it , though I may do so later , if my date is up for it.
Even though its a movie about Gays, It's entertaining enough and I must applaud the makers and directors for making this movie and its subject matter.
Bangkok Love Story
Stars: 3/5
The first half of Bangkok Love Story climaxes with a hot rooftop sex scene; in the second, its protagonists fail to establish a relationship. The catch is that the lovers are both men: a fresh Police Academy graduate and a hitman with a conscience.
How all this goes does down is more Bollywood than Brokeback Mountain. Get ready for buckets of tears, torrential rain when people kiss, and some really bad luck in the form of AIDS, abusive thugs, a molesting stepfather and a dying mother. Despite Chaiwat Thongsang “Tob” and Ratanabanrang Tosawat “A” being the most drop-dead gorgeous things on screen this year—their acting suffers from the melodramatic unrequited relationships (think Thai soap opera) director Poj Arnon puts them in.
Two things save Bangkok Love Story from disaster. The first is the photography (by director of photography Tiwa Maithaisong). It turns Bangkok into a character in its own right, and elevates many of its features (the Chao Phraya and Wat Arun, the Giant Swing, derelict moldy concrete buildings with rusted front grates, the BTS and the skyline) beyond banality and into icons like New York's Brooklyn Bridge and fire escapes; or Paris' quays of the Seine River and slate rooftops. Visually, Bangkok Love Story will remain a landmark in Thai cinema.
The movie’s second saving grace is the audacity to make a gay gangster flick in Thailand. If you can cut past Arnon’s melodramatic style, the story he tells is quite interesting. The character of the cop embodies Thailand’s establishment: he’s rich, he has graduated from the Police Academy, he is destined to be a high-ranking officer and is about to marry into a good family. The true divide between him and his gangster crush is class, not that they are on opposite sides of the law, or even that they are having a secret gay affair. In an effort to close the gap, the cop helps his friend fight through the quagmire he finds himself in (disease, poverty, the brutality of the underworld) but systematically fails. In the end, Arnon makes a better case for hitmen who need to feed their families than for the Royal Police’s elite. That he chooses to do it through a gay love story is all the more remarkable.—Gregoire Glachant