One Night in Bangkok (2020)

(On Cable TV, May 2021) How hard to you have to work in order to mess up a premise like “Mark Dacascos plays an assassin who forcibly retains the services of a cab driver while killing his way through a night spent in Bangkok?” Well, not to belabour the point but you just have to watch One Night in Bangkok to find out. While taking advantage of Bangkok’s nighttime neon lighting, the film remains an inert attempt at an action thriller, mishandling nearly every element at its disposal. Writer-director Wych Kaosayananda certainly does not redeem himself for Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002) nor The Driver (2019) here — his capacity to build a film remains doubtful no matter whether you’re focusing on the overall story or moment-to-moment emotion. (I’ll grant him a better-than-usual visual sense, however.)  Unable to distance itself from how its premise seems blatantly stolen from Collateral, this is a film that drags on and on without much of a point. Whatever narrative twists the film sets up for itself are blindingly obvious, and it doesn’t culminate into anything feeling like a climax. The only one who escapes from this with his reputation intact is Dacascos, who keeps hovering at the edge between direct-to-streaming stalwart and headlining action star. It’s not a bad thing that he’s the best thing out of a dull movie — but it would be better if he was one good thing about a good movie. Make One Night in Bangkok a layover — nothing to see here.