Vengeance (2006/Blu-ray/BCI Eclipse)

 

Picture: B     Sound: B-     Extras: C     Film: C

 

 

I give any film credit for being ambitious and some of the films we have seen from Thailand have been interesting in their approach, no matter the subjects covered or approach taken.  Writer/Director Pleo Sirisuwan’s Vengeance (2006) wants to combine Horror, Gangster, Martial Arts and even the Fantasy genres as a group of police tracks some gangsters to a nearby forest where monsters supposedly exist.  Faster than you can say Dragonslayer, gory dragon attacks suddenly become the biggest problem for all.

 

The film is very ambitious and can even be fun, but it takes on much mort than it can handle, resulting in phony digital monsters, a storyline that just becomes to unbelievable to work and by doing too many different film types never does any one of them well.  Of course, there are those who will enjoy the attempt and find this amusing, possibly giving it a cult appeal, but after 90 minutes, anything that does work is minimal and fleeting.  It will become a curio though, especially on Blu-ray.

 

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image is softer than you would expect a recent production to be, with more motion blur than one would like, even when you do not have digital effects.  The Dolby Digital Thai 5.1 sound is listed as “uncompressed” but at a 12:1 compression ratio, that is a very bogus claim and the strange soundfield only makes that more obvious here.  Maybe if it were Dolby TrueHD, but that’s would be another story.  The Dolby 2.0 Stereo is also a bit weak for the film and is standard for the extras.  Extras are few and include a Music Video, trailers and a making of featurette.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo