Bangkok Dangerous (2008)

With slicked back greasy hair and an ashen face so void of any expression, you're not quite sure he's even alive, Nicolas Cage barely sleepwalks his way through the achingly awful "Bangkok Dangerous." He's a zombie. In need of sugar. Or a new career path. This fro m the man of "Raising Arizona" and "Wild at Heart." Sad.

A 2008 action remake from The Bang Brothers, "Dangerous" follows an expert American assassin named Joe (Cage) who travels the world nailing people for hire. Why? Because they are "very bad." Or so he's told. After a hit at a Prague police station, Joe ends up in Bangkok for one last job (of course) as he pops four targets for one big pay out. Despite his own rules, the ice-cold killer soon plays teacher to a newly-hired assistant (Shahkrit Yamnarm) and boyfriend to a deaf pharmacist (Charlie Young), while (of course) discovering his conscious.

It's hard to pinpoint all the ways this dud film goes wrong. Maybe it's the fact that although Joe claims to never leave anything behind at a kill scene, he always is gloveless. Or that he goes on one mission in a crowded river marketplace in broad daylight and is stunned to learn that tourists are there -- with cameras! Or that the first mission in Prague requires police to bring a vital suspect into an interrogation room with giant bay windows. Also Cage's stunt double has far shorter hair, weighs quite a bit more and looks nothing like Cage.

The film is miserably scripted, shot, edited and acted to the point of pain. Joe's date with the deaf mute, a shamefully written role for any woman or deaf person, has to be the worst film scene in years, and not just because the actors have zero chemistry. Looking constipated and, I kid you not, stoned, Cage as Joe, stammers his way through the meal, stunned at the spicy food. "That's hot, that's real hot," he keeps on saying, bringing to mind a certain hotel heiress with the IQ of a deflated basketball.

But it's fitting. At this point even Paris Hilton's film career looks more promising than that of Cage. His career ended years ago, he just hasn't been told. Hands down one of the worst of 2008. Where's the Cage of long ago? F