Bangkok, 2012: liberal politician Direk Damrongprapa (Pornwut Sarasin) rises to power with the support of oppressed poor people rallied by his stalwart, civic minded fiancé, Vasana (Yarinda Boonnak). He promises sweeping social reforms. Four years later, Thailand has gone to hell in handbasket. Violent street punks and drug cartels run wild under the secret control of the sinister devil masked Matalee gang, and now-Prime Minister Damrongprapa could not care less. Only the mysterious, masked vigilante Red Eagle (Ananda Everingham) has the guts and martial arts ability to fight back, killing crooks and corrupt politicians alike on his nightly raids. His outlaw activities attract the police who assign wisecracking Detective Chart Wuttikrai (Wannasing Prasertkul) to take him down. Having ditched duplicitous Direk, Vasana shifts her attention to campaigning against plans for a foreign-backed nuclear power plant that threatens to pump tons of toxic waste into the ocean. Her efforts make her a target for government-sanctioned counter-terrorists, thus alerting Red Eagle, with whom she shares a special history. In the meantime, the Matalee gang enlist the aid of masked master assassin (a lot of masks in this movie), Black Devil to eliminate their arch-nemesis.
This flashy, big-budget Thai superhero movie is a remake of Insee Thong (1970) which was the last in a series of films based on the novels of popular pulp author Sek Dusit. The star and director of Insee Thong was Mitr Chaibancha, Thailand’s most popular matinee idol of the Sixties, though it stirs mixed feelings amongst his legions of fans given Chaibancha actually died performing the film’s climactic stunt. Thankfully, no such calamity befell this super-production although star Ananda Everingham has his name misspelled in the opening credits, which does not bode well. The task of updating this iconic Thai hero for the twenty-first century fell to writer-director Wisit Sasanatieng, whose charmingly oddball feature debut: Tears of the Black Tiger (2000) was widely misread by western critics as uproarious camp when it was actually a love letter to the heady style of classic Thai cinema in line with the films of Mitr Chaibancha. Fittingly, Red Eagle concludes with a dedication to Chaibancha over a photo of him in costume.
However, Sasanatieng evidently also wanted to offer some social commentary on the state of his nation. Possibly taking its cue from the recent Batman films of Christopher Nolan, Red Eagle drops its two-fisted costumed hero into the midst of a complex, combustible political backdrop where shifting allegiances between big business, political powers and organised crime wreak misery upon misery for the long-suffering people of Thailand. Characters repeatedly voice their anxieties that the nation is poised to sink under a miasma of pollution, corruption and general lawlessness, while few other superhero films go as far in portraying the head of state as arrogant, indifferent and cruel. Imagine if Batman Begins (2005) had ended with Batman in a face-off with some allegorical stand-in for George W. Bush?
Which is all well and good, except the film’s sociopolitical satire never interacts with activities of its masked hero. In fact, for a so-called superhero, Red Eagle does nothing especially heroic. He never rescues anyone, nor defend anyone downtrodden or oppressed. What Red Eagle does do is kill bad guys in increasingly grisly ways. Upping the violence of even outlandish Hong Kong superhero movies, Red Eagle decapitates one villain and plays football with his severed head, smashes an unfortunate’s teeth against a urinal, snaps bones in x-ray vision just like Sonny Chiba in The Street Fighter (1975) and splatters blood all over the place. Frankly, it’s hard not to share Detective Chart’s assessment of him as a total psychopath. As if that were not enough, he is also a morphine addict (the original was an alcoholic), shoots cops and a flashback reveals his first meeting with Vasana came when he car-jacked her at gunpoint then threatened to kill her when she uncovered his identity. Some hero. Even so, Vasana falls for Red Eagle, though no specific scene outlines this romance, we’re just meant to accept it as given prior to a hilarious sex scene in a refrigerated garage full of ice blocks. Aren’t they the least bit cold?
Overlong and episodic with scenes that simply do not gel together, although the flashback ridden story structure yields some surprises including the identity of Black Devil, the film gets by on the strength of its action sequences. The stylised super-battles angered martial arts purists (a criticism that is fast growing tiresome, given not every Asian action film has to look realistic), but the money shows on the screen bouyed by Sanantieng’s visual panache. Notably a riotous, self-parodic set-piece pitting Red Eagle against Black Devil that runs for a whopping twenty minutes, whereupon one character jokes: “Damn! This is exhausting.” Sadly the acting is tepid all-round with monotone performers failing to ennoble already one-dimensional characters. At two hours plus, viewers will likely be left frustrated this fades out with a “to be continued” with no sequel as yet on the horizon.
