in Thailand My Dear Murderer (now streaming on Netflix) brings together two titans of Southeast Asian cinema: romance and martial arts. Pimchanok Luevisadpaibul, Thanapo Leeratanakachorn and Sivakorn Adulsuttikul play an asskickers love triangle in this neo-chopsocky musical directed by Taweewat Wantha (the Whisperer of Death films) – and the result is, well, mixed, torn between two styles without fully committing to either.
Idea: It is called “aurum blood.” In this case, it is the rarest blood type in the world, so the rich and powerful people with aurum blood need other aurum blood-havers as a backup supply like that which cannot be found in the local hospital. We’ll see scenes where aurum blood transfusions seem to work to save lives, lifting people with serious gunshot or stab wounds from near death to ripe ‘n’ ready after a few hours, but whether it has the most effective healing power is unclear. Perhaps the movie cheats a little, using narrative brevity. If I don’t explain this well, let it be known that the movie doesn’t explain it well either.
Anyway. A Vietnamese girl, Lhan, sees her parents killed as an evil gang tries to kidnap her aurum-blood boss. But they are interrupted by another group, led by Po (Chartayodom Hiranyasthiti), who has brought him back to Bangkok for reasons that are not clearly disclosed because none of the characters, unlike us in the audience, feel compelled to ask. But the group is a secretive group of assassins known as House 89, using a second-hand furniture warehouse as a prime location for their training and work. Years pass and still no one asks the basic question as Lhan grows into adulthood, played by Luevisadpaibul. He is “taken care of” by Po’s son Pran (Leeratanakachorn) and another founder, M (Adulsuttikul), who are both hunky little guys. Somehow, he knows nothing about the real business of House 89, and is never allowed to leave the premises. Three older children play and splash in the rain and then go inside and sit in a row pulling towels, Lhan in the middle. That visual – hoo boy.
As Lhan and Pran look at each other with moist eyes and paint each other’s nails while M watches sadly from afar, the evil team that failed to snatch his teams rebuild. They are led by Phurek (Toni Rakkaen), who is allied with the notorious killer, Chaba (Chanudom Suksatit). In the end, Lhan learns that House 89’s true mission is not just to turn one man’s table into another man’s fortune. The team takes M on a mission that looks like it’s going to be a tough action set piece but comes out with nary a head, and while everyone else is gone, Pran takes Lhan to an alien world. Bad idea: When they left the party to watch cutesyrookins, a coincidence put them in Phurek’s place. The couple decide to escape but Phurek puts the kibosh on the plan when he and a bunch of ninja thugs attack a furniture store. Eventually, Lhan gets tired of being a helpless girl and trains to be an assassin again, and you know, I didn’t realize that you can’t learn to kill without pointing out the vulnerable parts of the human anatomy on the body of your love lead. I have to say, this is the best sex course I’ve ever seen.
What Movies Will They Remind You Of? My Dear Murderer it takes John Wick and countless cornball elements of romantic intimacy with young Asians and forcing them into an unhappy, unhappy marriage.
Performances to Watch: Suksatit is the only cast member who approaches her character with any verve or energy.
Sex and Skin: This one stops smoking. Boo? Yes. Boooooo.
Ours: The problem is, those sexy lessons aren’t sexy enough. They’re hot and they don’t work, because My Dear Murderer shows little interest in developing its characters beyond basic archetypes. Even the love triangle, which is apparently easy to develop because of its broad emotional beats, works like you live in a monsoon for days. The film struggles to maintain any romantic tension or suspense with a long series of vague sequences, and takes far too long to deliver on its promise of romance and action. And when it finally does, the kissyface stuff drowns in schmaltzy luv-shakk vocoder pop music, and the action is done in equal parts overwrought slo-mo and nerve-wracking jitter-cam cinematography. Wantha shows the ability to deliver gun-fu and hand-to-hand thrills with a solid fight system and sharp editing, and while the result is as entertaining as the original, it is still indistinguishable from many other films of its kind.
A disappointing addition to the film’s indifference to developing a compelling subtext: First is the idea that Lhan’s desire for bodily independence – he wants to be trained in heroic ways to gain independence and protect himself from bad actors who lust for his blood – may serve as a symbolic representation of the painful realities of human rights trafficking and other issues of human rights trafficking. Second, the possible manifestation of Pran and Lhan we will mention unusual initial exchange of body fluids. Both ideas are left to wither and perish thanks to a film too shy to tease us with anything political or sexual, choosing instead to lean heavily on tedious, miles-wide/inch-deep melodrama. It has no problem showing us people’s heads and bodies being smashed or blown up, though – the double standard of sex and violence is always very high. My Dear Murderer.
Our Phone: You can’t cut roses with a dull blade. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog lied once.
