I am assuming that this pile of dross was intended to go straight to the less discerning DVD market. It is exploitative, cliché-ridden, badly acted, badly scripted and the aforementioned monks are the only sympathetic characters in the entire film (with the exception of a couple of dogs on a refuse tip which turn in a very creditable debut performance).The only exploitation I witnessed was the depiction of Thailand as an immoral, flea ridden pit full of murderers, gangs and whore-mongers. I'm sure the Thai tourist board will pass on their thanks - though it's hardly an original depiction.Kevin Bacon. It has to be said that his credibility has been gradually slipping down the toilet - and in this he continues his downward descent. Most extraordinarily in a faux Australian- British-'Gawd bliss ya Meery Poppns' Dick van Dyke accent. At first, I had assumed his voice had been dubbed, I wish it had been.The violence is comic strip, video console style - this serves to further detach the viewer from any empathy to the characters or interest in proceedings.A local girl crops up regularly. Not sure why. All in all, think how far you could have got with the decorating in one and a half hours.

Human trafficking and child prostitution are the focal points of this very dark, noisy, brutally frank film, and if those preliminary adjectives don't deter then there are a few reasons to watch this direct to DVD film, mainly the contribution of producer/star Djimon Hounsou. Thai director Prachya Pinkaew holds this slaughter of the bad guys together fairly well and the minimal script by Kevin Bernhardt attempts to infuse the bitter story with a dollop of mysticism (the title is the clue). The acting by a very large cast of Thai actors is basically relegated to shooting and getting shot so there isn't a lot of character development possible.The setting is Bangkok where Curtie Church (Djimon Hounsou) who is a prolific professional assassin who has accumulating a sizable cash reserve from his trade. His impressive store of weapons (a larger cash of bizarre guns has never been so visible!) is provided by his English arms dealer Jimmy (Kevin Bacon). Curtie wishes to retire from his sordid role and is on his last assignment when he is joined by a strange and beautiful young girl name Mae (Jirantanin Pitakporntrakul). During the completion of his final score, Curtie is annoyed by Mae who wonders why the assassin is killing in the first place. Curtie admits it is for the money, but the somewhat ethereal Mae informs him that other evil men need his expertise and brand of justice: Curtie becomes involved in a mission to stop the trafficking of child prostitutes by eliminating those who deal in human flesh.For the most part the film is about killing and is a constant stream of assassinations by a variety to weapons and chases. Hounsou is solid, manages to capture some tenderness in his relationship with Pitakporntrakul, and the efforts to make the film have mystical effects almost works at times. Kevin Bacon does his best in a thankless role but is bogged down with a twitchy British accent. This is definitely not a film for the easily disturbed, but for proponents of action and mounting killings the film should satisfy. And it does address the ongoing global problem of sex trafficking. Maybe someone will notice this problem soon. Grady Harp

OK I read the other reviews of this film before I decided to watch it, and to be honest I really don't know what the people who gave this film a really bad review, are talking about. I mean alright it was not an Oscar winner, but come on it wasn't a bad film, in fact I enjoyed it. The action scenes were shot well, and the dialogue while not fantastic, it was enough to keep you interested. Moreover, the story line about human trafficking and child prostitution is a one which is very real and about time more is done to tackle it in the real world, anyway the twist at the end of the film was surprising and completed the well rounded story. I have to say that Djimon Hounsou is a fantastic actor and did not disappoint in this film, Kevin Bacon was alright as well apart from the strange accent ( I actually thought my speakers were broken when he first began to talk !, I am from the UK and trust me no one talks like that here !). I was also impressed by Jirantanin Pitakporntrakul, who I thought acted really well and played a really good character, Mae and I hope to see her in more films in the future.So would I recommend this film, well the answer is yes, it was an action packed film with a good story line and good acting, and more importantly the bad guys get their asses kicked, which is something that we don't really see to much of nowadays.

The director of Ong-Bak, The Protector and Chocolate makes a bid for international audiences with this Taken-like thriller. Djimon Honsou stars as an assassin hired by a man to start a gang war between two rival sex traffickers in Bangkok. After seeing the horrors of the sex trafficking business, the mission becomes more personal for Honsou. He becomes determined to kill every pimp and gangster in town. Kevin Bacon co-stars as a Cockney arms dealer with ambiguous loyalties. Yes, I said Cockney. I don't think I've ever heard Bacon do an accent before, and it sounds a little silly at the beginning. I can't say whether the accent is good or not, but the performance is entertaining. Bacon really gets to ham it up, and he seems like he's having a ball. Super-cute Jirantanin Pitakporntrakul co-stars as an escaped prostitute who befriends Honsou. The girl might think about changing her nine syllable name (although it does contain the word "porn"!) if she wants an international career. Take a look at some of her awesome pics on her IMDb page.Unfortunately, the film isn't very good. Like I said, it's pretty much a rip-off of the Liam Neeson-starring action flick Taken, which was massively popular throughout the world. Pinkaew's supreme talent with martial arts filmmaking doesn't translate very well here, and the action is rather choppy. Most of the action involves Honsou sniping various gangsters from afar (the best sequence in the film has Honsou picking off gangsters as they engage in a street war with a rival gang, and it's entirely filmed from Honsou's point of view). When Honsou has to fight up close, he does use some very basic martial arts, but you can tell that that's not his thing. It's nice to see Honsou get a starring role, but he's kind of bland here. You tend to long for Bacon to show up again whenever he's not around.