Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Mixed reviews for Pen-ek's Headshot in Toronto



Pen-ek Ratanaruang's film-noir thriller Headshot (Fon Tok Kuen Fah, ฝนตกขึ้นฟ้า) premiered over the weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, and, sitting 8,500 miles away in Bangkok, it's been hard for me to keep tabs on this highly anticipated movie from a cult-favorite director.

Finally, word is starting to trickle in.

Screen Daily has a mixed review.

Headshot will be a tough-sell internationally: It does not fit into the art-house niche, neither will it satisfy the cops-and-robbers crowd. Even domestically, this will limit its appeal. This is a shame because Ratanaruang is interested in exposing the extent of corruption in his home country.

The review by Howard Feinstein laments a lack of coherence but praises leading "Peter" Nopachai Jayanama and the cinematography by Chankit Chamnivikaipong.

A much more positive outlook on Pen-ek's upside-down hitman tale comes from Toronto blogger Movie Moxie who has photos and links to her video log on her TIFF Day 4 review:

It's a dark look at dark ideas, but I found it fascinating to watch it unfold through an intense and graceful pace. Very well done, fascinating idea and story and huge kudos to actor Nopachai Jayanama for making the audience feel the bizarre experience of what he is going through. I loved it.

There now. That's better.

2 comments:

  1. I love all Pen-ek's stuff. I have only seen the trailer but it looks amazing. I wonder how credible a Canadian critic is at assessing the Thai audience's take on the corruption theme. My initial hunch is 'not very'. Also, i thought Cris Horwang would be the hottest thing in this, I was wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There's more favorable review with nice things to say about Cris at Film Business Asia.

    ReplyDelete

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