Wych Kaosayananda

  • The Driver (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) There are premises that seem hard to mishandle — for instance, having a father and young daughter do a road trip to safety in the middle of a zombie epidemic, even as the father has been bitten. Even better, having the pair being played by real-life daughter-and-father Noelani and Mark Dacascos, the latter of whom is a solid (if not always well-used or well-directed) low-budget action performer since the 1990s. But the ways in which a film can screw up are far more numerous than the ways a premise can be execution-proof, and so The Driver ends up being a singularly limp and forgettable affair. The zombie element is (at infrequent exceptions) a background noise rather than an existential threat. The action elements are far fewer than expected, and the film is closer to straight-up drama than an outright action movie. Then there’s a fundamental problem with the premise in that zombies are not, as a rule, very good drivers — so the kinetic aspect of a drive does not incorporate a chase. This limits the film in a way that the rest of the execution fails to improve. The Driver is simply dull, the characters fail to come to life and the ending is disappointing, especially as it sucks the life of a film whose better moments are toward the beginning. The change of scenery of shooting a film in Thailand doesn’t matter as much as anyone would think, and even the slick cinematography from director Wych Kaosayananda can’t save an overlong result. I still think that there’s a good film to be made about core premise… but it’s not going to be The Driver that does it.

  • One Night in Bangkok (2020)

    One Night in Bangkok (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (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.