Henchwomen Fight

In 2006 movie Mercury Man. Actress Metinee Kingpayome plays as villainess Arena. We see our stunning villainess at the start of the movie, she go for locals and ask them to escort her and her men claiming that they are foreigners, while in fact they only use the locals as a cover to smuggle weapons. She was stopped at a military checkpoint, what the poor soldiers didn't know, that her beautiful eyes behind the mask is bringing danger and death to them, in a matter of seconds she killed them all, even the poor local civilians who accompanied her didn't survive her wrath. 

Then our villainess with her men reached their target, a religious relic protected by the locals in a temple, Arena orders her men to get it, but there's a female guard protecting it, our villainess fight the guard and manged to defeat her and get the relic and leave the temple.

Ok, the hero, Chen, is a firefighter, and saved a baby from a fire in the building, and got out using the ax as a handle for a zip line, Ok, that's a BS, but it's fun BS, I love it..

WTF, the villains in this movie are Arab Ninjas!! LOL!!

This movie is very ambitious in its premise, let's see if it will deliver or not, It's interesting tho, I'm happy I'm watching it.

Ok, here's my problem with the hero's first confrontation with the villains, basically the villains are being presented as some mysterious assassins, they are armed, well-trained, took down the guards as if they are nothing, basically unstoppable force, then the hero face them and kill one of them in a matter of seconds, basically destroying what was just built in the minutes before the confrontation, this should've never happened, as I said before on the uniqueness of villains, in this case, these villains lack uniqueness, so basically defeating one of them is exactly the same as defeating all of them, so, in the beginning of the movie the hero basically defeated all these highly trained assassins, imagine this scenario, the hero fight them, but they easily over power him, but he doesn't surrender and keep fighting back, till reaching the point he's assumed dead, then after words, he gets his power, and then later when he became more powerful, and finally defeat one of the assassins, then he achieved a milestone, it's used in many movies with similar themes like The Matrix, Kung Fu Hustle, Koyla, Kill Bill and many others, because it works and keep the audience engaged with the character, as the character evolve and grow over time, while in this case, the character doesn't need to evolve, he wasn't even defeated!!

Now the hero was injected with the holy substance that I assume will give him superpowers, and my question is why? Like, how the superpower would make anything that actually matter for the character, we already saw him easily defeating one of the villains, and didn't get even a fight with Ali, so we aren't even sure if he's capable of defeating him without superpowers or not, like with Spider-Man for example having superpowers was very significant for him, it was used to earn money, effected his love life, effected his career, it was a life-changing event, while in this case, I don't get why he even need it, and him having superpowers have so little impact, yeah, probably later we will see how he use it and towards which goal, but now, the moment he got the superpowers, it gets so little impact, and all of that because he wasn't defeated by the assassins in the first confrontation.

    We see our stunning villainess around 29 minutes, I'm so in love with her..

This movie was obviously made for Americans, it's different from Ong-Bak, you can see how this movie have extensive English use, and it was made in 2006 and the main villain is talking about being an enemy of America, while in Ong-Bak and many of Tony Jaa's movies, you can see how it was mainly made to appeal to Thailand, even if it appeal to people from all around the world..  

We see a villainess around 31 minutes, god.. This was so stupid that I laughed, it's like the movie really taking all the stereotypes from back then and enforced it in the movie, I have to rewatch this movie with my friends, this is so funny, especially this scene 🤣🤣🤣.  

I said the movie is ambitious, it's trying to be so many things at the same time, which really doesn't help with the pacing, that's why this scene made me laugh involuntarily, it just came out of nowhere.

 The movie actually looks really good the effects are well-done, the story seems like a mix of 24 and Spider-Man and I'm not sure if it's good or bad LOL, it's definitely interesting.

Now we have 3D animation in the movie LOL..

 We see our evil goddess again around 37 minutes asking for the hero, as her evil organization want to extract the substance out of him, which doesn't make sense, because they could've taken him after the first confrontation but whatever.

Here's some interesting scene, around 38 minutes, we see a Time Magazine, after searching about it, it turns out it had the cover of April 16, 2001 issue, what's interested about this, is that issue had two covers, one for USA with Jesus Christ on the cover, and the other for Asia, Africa, and Middle East, and this one with the Chinese president Jiang Zemin on the cover, If you don't know who Jiang Zemin, You should watch this video.  

Around 40 minutes, Arena and her henchmen broke into the hero's home, they knocked him out, we get another nice fight scene of our evil goddess.

The pacing of this movie is a mess..

I really don't get why this movie is so worried about America, like, dude, you are in Thailand, the only reason that would make America relevant to me in anyway is movies, the more China give me good movies with good villains, the more likely I would volunteer in the People's Liberation Army LOL, for me without movies and TV shows America worth nothing, zero, as if the Americas never discovered, I would exactly care about America as much as people in the 16th century did. 

Anyway, We see Arena around 1 hour 4 minutes coming out with a device that would make the hero lose his powers, so the villains attacked a night club to lure the hero, and when he went there, they activated the device..

And here what I talked about before, the idea that the hero's superpower doesn't really effect his ability to fight the villains, not only he manged to resist them, but he actually defeated them as if he doesn't need his superpowers in the first place, like, everything seems pointless!!

So, the villains took the hero's mother hostage, and in exchange of letting her go, the hero have to give them the amulet that give him superpowers.

 The hero manged to free his mother in a couple of minutes, now the stakes of this movie is the villains want to destroy some ship.. 

Ok, around 1 hour 24 minutes, the hero actually had a good fighting move ending the fight with Arsis, like why didn't the movie use that more, imagine this, instead of focusing too much on CGI which age horribly BTW, and the movie would be much better with less of it, especially the ones making the hero as if he's a rubber doll, the movie could use a professional Muay Thai fighter to show that the suit give him such superpowers, it's like a mix of Ong-Bak and superhero movie, can you imagine how cool that would be, when the dialog is happening we get the actor, when the fight is happening, we get a professional Muay Thai fighter, no CGI is needed.

Around 1 hour 25 minutes, Arena have another fight with the guardian of the amulet, towards the end of the fight our gorgeous villainess injects herself with a substance that gives her superpowers, her final fight with the hero starts around 1 hour 35 minutes, you can watch it here.

The way this movie is pandering to the USA is unbelievable, like the main villain is going like this "We believe in death. America believes in life", like I've never seen any Hollywood movie is so loyal to America as much as this movie, like why the movie trying so hard to show that it love America, this is a Thai movie, and the plot is barely about Thailand..

Anyway, beside the plot that I find needlessly pandering to USA geopolitics, I absolutely love Arena, I would die for her, and Metinee Kingpayome is insanely gorgeous, after all she's Miss Thailand World of 1995. The male villain started really good, and ended really stupid, like his highest point was at the very beginning, like he started mysterious, and the beard and isolation played a part to make you curious about him, then they shaved his beard making him look 20 years younger LOL, taking away part of what made him mysterious, then they kept making him irrelevant, that the final fight was with the villainess not him, he was barely a challenge, the movie could've been really great if they actually simplified things, like make the challenge of the hero simpler, like for example make him save someone he love, or even make a connection between the hero and the boy with superpower, who I rarely mentioned because he seemed with little importance to the story except in the very end of the movie, but before that, he never had any connection with any other main character in the movie, the hero also should've been weakened sometimes, like his original story barely shows that he needed superpowers in the first place, so him having superpowers kind of meaningless.. I'm getting too harsh on the movie, I get those who made the movie are fascinated with Hollywood and USA, and they want to make something to show their love to the American culture, but many times it kind of feel out of place and weight the movie down, instead of making it better, as for Arena, I worship her, I'm so in love with her character 😍😍😍, which make it a great movie for me.