Review
of Bang Rajan -
New York Times, September 9,
2004
...The Burmese are thoroughly demonized
as bloodthirsty savages. "What
kind of man could do this?" one
character asks, surveying a scene
of hideous carnage. And the Burmese
are led by a tubby, decadent general
who seems to have stepped out of "Quo
Vadis." The Siamese men are lean,
mean fighting machines with the bodies
of Calvin Klein models. They, too,
enjoy hacking off arms and heads,
but only in the ennobling context
of battle.
...But there's something arrogantly
ethnocentric in the way American marketing
know-how has been used to transform
one country's nationalist epic into
another's splatter camp, complete
with amusingly inept subtitles. ("What's
the plan, Chan?" asks one soldier
of his commander.)
Popular Posts
- Knives out for Sudarat
- Don’ Let Death In the Car
- Run to oust Prayuth
- Run to oust Sudarat
- He is cutting the tiger’s tail
- What is appropriate in parliament?
- The proxy crisis
- New Year’s Cartoons: The Only Happiness
- Would the Prime Minister run to oust himself?
- Chase the government!
- Kissing in parliament