Thursday 24 May 2007

Tears Of The Black Tiger


Thanks to Neil over at The Bleeding Tree for making me aware of this film.

Not only is this a lavishly beautiful film at times, but in the first 15-20 minutes, I'd already been treated to impossible ricochet shots, big booming BWAHAHAHAHA! laughs from bad guys, buckets of gooey bright red blood and plenty of cocked eyebrows. And every possible colour from one of those big Crayola boxes.

If "Psychedelic Thai Westerns" is a genre this movie would be the flag bearer. It's nothing less than a big bag of fun and occasional sensory overload. Depending on your taste for excessive melodrama it may not be much more either, but I sure enjoyed it. Others have blogged about it better, so I'll just put up a whole bunch of screenshots:























That last one precedes a rather unsettling and gruesome end for one of the characters. Let's just say it puts your teeth on edge...

2 comments:

Neil Sarver said...

I'm glad to see that you enjoyed it.

I'm, as it goes, a big fan of melodrama, at least when, as here, it's the style and not just used cheaply late into a movie that it doesn't fit into.

This perfectly sets up its concept right off the bat and one can either jump aboard and enjoy the ride or not. As I said before, I thought it was amazing.

I'm glad to hear that I inspired someone to see it and even more that you enjoyed it.

Bob Turnbull said...

Hi Neil,

Yes indeed, I am indebted to you for the pointer. B-) And since I now own it (this film screamed out blind buy) I can now pass it on to some other friends.

I'm fine with melodrama as well, though it doesn't always work for me. For example, I loved Sirk's "Written On The Wind" but didn't really care for "Imitation Of Life". The former seemed to have more fun with the style.