SF or Bust: We get down at the first-ever Outside Lands fest

I left Bangkok Dangerous with several questions. First, why are remakes of Asian films in such high demand? It seems like an exercise in intentionally wasting time and money. Beyond that, why do Asian filmmakers like Takashi Shimizu (The Grudge) and now The Pang Brothers remake their own movies? Americanization saps the mystique and charisma out of the originals. We didn't see John Woo come over here and start re-making all of his flicks. (No, he had the good foresight to make new, crappy American movies.) And what's the deal with Nicholas Cage? I remember a time when he was good. The problem is that he has made so many bad movies that it's getting hard to tell if he can even make a good movie. If he can, Bangkok Dangerous isn't it.
Bangkok is the moody and dark story of a lonely hit-man, Joe (Cage), who decides to befriend his chosen courier (Shahkrit Yamnarm) because he "sees himself in him." Yeah, right. The sidekick-mentor-teacher-pupil strains believability. Everyone knows a hit-man cannot trust anyone, yet right away he befriends some kid. Here we have yet another in a string of hit-man movies wherein the dude doing the killing gains a conscience somehow along the line of work, breaks all his own rules and then gets into trouble with the bad guys. The only sensible way is to shoot it out. No plot twists, no tricks, just straight forward storytelling no matter how farfetched and ridiculous it gets.

Pity poor Joel and Ethan Coen. You make a masterpiece or two, and people start expecting it from you every time out.
Let's face it: Part of being a great artist in any field is the burden of high expectations. If you're Bob Dylan, and you produce an album that's merely good stuff by any other standard, the pundits will be lined up to shrug, "Meh, it's no Blonde on Blonde."
And in contemporary cinema, that's what you face if you're the Coens. Jon Favreau funnels Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man performance into a halfway competent comic-book movie, and he's the second coming of Steven Spielberg. Burn After Reading, on the other hand … well, it's no No Country for Old Men. Over 23 years of filmmaking, the Coens' worst movies-The Ladykillers, Intolerable Cruelty-have been better than anything 90 percent of filmmakers will ever make. Discovery-or its cousin, the comeback-makes so much more interesting a story than sustained quality.
Yet here the brothers are again, turning out another goofy, predictably unpredictable caper about people in over their heads. It all begins with Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), a hot-tempered CIA analyst whose demotion inspires his resignation, and plans for a tell-all memoir. But the notes for Cox's book wind up on the same disk as financial information for his wife Katie's (Tilda Swinton) planned divorce proceedings, which all inadvertently winds up in the hands of two D.C.-area fitness center employees. For Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), the information could be the key to paying for the cosmetic surgery she longs for; and for her co-worker Chad (Brad Pitt) … well, it's something cool to do.