With its loud acting style, exuberant sets and stunning shots in pastel colours, this Thai cult film is as much a parody as an homage to the Western and the romantic tearjerker. In the countryside of Thailand, a gang of outlaws makes the region unsafe. Among them is the handsome gun hero Dum, who became unwillingly involved in the bandit life. Handsome Dum made a promise to his upper-crust lover Rumpoey: despite the class difference, they will get married. When the moment of reunion arrives, Dum gets involved in a fire fight and cannot possibly reach Rumpoey in time. She is desperate: her father has married her off to a policeman. The taciturn Dum, called the 'Black Tiger' by his co-conspirators, has however not forgotten Rumpoey. He does everything in his power to reach her, but fate gets in the way: his gang leader suspects him of treachery and his blood brother turns into his greatest enemy. Will the two lovers ever meet up? This urgent question propels the melodrama forward, supported by exciting music, spectacular shootouts and heroic duels. Harvey Weinstein famously used to buy up foreign films and then would refuse to distribute them to American theaters, thus reducing competition in the arthouses for the films he actually decided to release. Tears of the Black Tiger was one of those films. Now Magnolia Films got it away from him and has it available. It's a Thai Western, with some of the weirdest and wildest production design to be seen. Unfortunately, it doesn't live up to that amazing trailer that played the art-house circuit back in January. While it certainly is a lot of fun in parts, the pacing is poor and the story gets so bogged down in romantic melodrama that at times it's downright boring. Still, those fun parts make it worth sitting through. When the Sergio Leone-esquire violence begins, it's always entertaining. And it has a couple of the best movie deaths ever. Maybe it is because my expectations were too high that I'm a tad disappointed now I've finally seen it.<br/><br/>Of course I understand the tongue-in-cheek mood set for this movie. Indeed this is a funny movie, with some very interesting visual effects during gun fights these visual gags resemble similar ones from Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead. But by no means this is an archetype western like I read in one review (someone wrote that this movie was some kind of lesson on how to do westerns)<br/><br/>In a ranking of westerns in which John Ford's The Man who Shot Liberty Valance is 10/10, Sergio Leone's Once upon a Time in the West 9/10 Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch 8/10 Tears of the Black Tiger is 5/10 or at the very most maybe 6/10. On the other hand if you don't compare it to those summits, Tears of the Black Tiger deserves 7/10. Of course we don't need to compare this movie to those masterpieces mentioned above; I've only established the unjust comparison as a guide intended to help western-buffs to have a quick and overall idea of this movie) <br/><br/>Regarding the actors, the over-acting, operatic style chosen it doesn't seem to work always with all the actors. Regarding the saturated colors it is nothing more than that, they're not a feat of cinematography or post-production; those colors can be achieved very easily during color timing. <br/><br/>The songs are quite cool and the main actress is a not only beautiful but also she can act, the same can be said of the actor who plays the main male character, he's handsome and a good actor as well.<br/><br/>To conclude, this is a movie I recommend to see, not only because otherwise you'll never be able to boast you have seen a Thai western which is always a strange thing to see but also because is an entertaining movie with a couple of fine touches of comedy . The intoxicating madness of Tears of the Black Tiger is in the end too willed, too deliberate, to be entirely divine.
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326 weeks ago