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Category:    Home > Reviews > Superhero > Comedy > Thailand > Mercury Man (2006/MagNet DVD)

Mercury Man (2006/MagNet DVD)

 

Picture: C-     Sound: C     Extras: C     Feature: C+

 

 

Thai filmmakers seem to have a bit of an inferiority complex.  Of the few titles that have made their way to American markets recently, many seem to be fairly derivative of more globally recognized film genres.  Sick Nurses follows in the Japanese horror tradition of the “hair ghost” that has found its way to American remakes in The Ring and The Grudge.  Similarly, Mercury Man amounts to little more than a Thai version of Spiderman.  And yet oddly enough, it almost works.

 

The story is based around Chan, a firefighter with a reckless sense of adventure and heroism, a transgender fashion designer sister, and a mystical liquid flowing through his veins.  With these three crucial elements, Chan becomes the superhero Mercury Man.  He’s indestructible, fireproof, and for some unexplained reason he can fly when he puts his fist in the air as though he were Spiderman shooting a web.  Once he’s figured out his powers, Chan pits himself against an Arab terrorist organization that has decided that the best place to execute an attack on the United States is in Thailand.  And yet, for some reason the terrorists are the only characters in the movie that speak English.

 

The choreography team that wowed audiences worldwide a few years ago with Ong Bak is back in a brand-new, stunningly less impressive display of martial arts prowess.  Granted, Mercury Man has more flash and effects than Ong Bak did, but the cast simply doesn’t have the sheer bucketfuls of talent that Tony Jaa does.  But that’s almost okay.  A superhero movie like this is invested in a different level of spectacle than a straight-up kick flick is.  Where Tony Jaa jumps over people in the street, and that’s awesome because he’s just a normal guy, Mercury Man jumps off of the top of massive suspension bridges because he’s a superhero.

 

The special effects in the film are only decent by Hollywood standards, but it almost plays off as one of the film’s charms.  The picture, in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, is below average, obviously losing quality in the transfer to DVD, but it may not have been great to begin with.  The audio is a little better, but still a bit muddled, especially on the Thai dialogue tracks.  The dialogue comes in your choice of Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 in both Thai and English.

 

The extras are few, but decent.  There is a making-of documentary, which is really just cast and crew interviews, and a “Behind the Scenes” that is simply footage from an extra cameraman that was on set.  This extra footage though, is surprisingly informative about the process that went into making the film and executing the effects shots.  Unfortunately, the Behind the Scenes only lasts two minutes in comparison with the making-of documentary’s ten.

 

Now I won’t say that Mercury Man is a good movie, nor is it even a good superhero movie, but there is something about it that’s just plain fun.  Maybe it’s the over-the-top but poorly executed action sequences or maybe it’s the predictably bad English dubbing.  In the end though, I think it’s that the filmmakers clearly love superhero movies, and despite the fact that they didn’t have the budget or the chops to pull it off, that passion still finds its way onto the screen.  On second thought, scratch that. What really makes this movie so much fun is that Mercury Man blows up the bad guy’s head with his knees.

 

 

-   Matthew Carrick


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