The Pang Brothers’ “Bangkok Dangerous” is yet another entry in a long line of films about how great it is to be a hitman.  Nicolas Cage stars as Joe, a career killer who has long since tired of the job.  He travels to Bangkok for one last assignment before retiring. 

        Wherever he goes, Joe hires an assistant to help him with things like information collection and translation.  He always kills the assistant before he leaves.  The assistant in this case is Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm).  Kong is an irritating little screw-up, and audiences will probably hope that Joe doesn’t wait until the end of his trip to kill him. 

        As it happens, Joe doesn’t kill him at all.  In fact, Joe takes him under his wing and trains him as an apprentice.  He doesn’t see a need to kill Kong, he doesn’t see a need to kill one of his targets, he gets sloppy in assassinating another target, and he enters into a relationship with someone outside of his work.  He’s committing career suicide by having a heart.

        Joe starts dating a deaf pharmacist (Charlie Yeung) he meets while buying lotion for a nasty cut.  He’s awkward around her, mainly because he lives an anonymous life without much social interaction.  The message of these scenes is that the couple has trouble communicating, with constant literal clues (her deafness and the language and cultural barriers) in case we don’t pick up on the figurative ones. 

        The clumsy date scenes may get a few uncomfortable chuckles, but they have nothing on the unintentional hilarity of the film’s big chase scene.  Joe and one of his victims engage in – I kid you not – a gondola chase.  The scene has many problems, not the least of which is that the gondolas just look goofy.    

        “Bangkok Dangerous” doesn’t bring much to the table.  The Pang Brothers pull off a few moderately impressive stunts involving heights, but the rest is pretty standard.  The film probably wouldn’t have even been released if they hadn’t locked down Nicolas Cage’s star power at an early stage.  The film will do his career no favors.