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Queens of Langkasuka
(aka Legend of the Tsunami Warrior, Pirates of Langkasuka)
2008; directed by Nonzee Nimibutr

Recently released on US home video as Legend of the Tsunami Warrior, Queens of Langkasuka is one of the highest-grossing films in Thai movie history, and it's easy to see why. While it's about as deep as an inflatable kiddie pool, this is an enjoyable fantasy picture that will provide enough thrills to keep fans of Asian action cinema happy.

Queens of Langkasuka    Queens of Langkasuka

The movie takes place in the 1600's in the kingdom of Langasuka, which is constantly being attacked by a group of pirates led by the evil Black Raven. Langasuka's queen hopes to destroy Black Raven once and for all by building huge cannons, but the ship they're being carried on is blown up, and the cannons fall to the bottom of the ocean. Now defenseless against Black Raven's attack, Langasuka's only hope rests with a rag-tag group of heroes, including Pani, a young man who has special powers to harness the power of the sea.

Queens of Langkasuka    Queens of Langkasuka

Queens of Langkasuka starts out a bit rough, as the story jumps around from character to character. The flow in the beginning is uneven to say the least. Supposedly, the movie was around twenty minutes longer in its' original cut that premiered at the Cannes festival, but was quickly re-tooled to satisfy audience complaints that the film ran too long. At any rate, if you can get past the first half-hour or so to the point where the storytelling settles down and more elaborate action scenes are introduced into the mix, Queens of Langkasuka becomes a fun ride.

Queens of Langkasuka    Queens of Langkasuka

Queens of Langkasuka liberally uses CGI, mostly to show the other-worldly magical powers of some of the characters. Thankfully, though, save for a couple of poor-looking vista shots, it's used well enough that the computer tweaking doesn't become distracting or annoying ala The Storm Warriors. And fans of hard-hitting Thai entries like Ong Bak don't need to worry about getting their fill of kicks to the head -- there is still a lot of traditional action used, and it's done well, especially the scenes featuring Dynamite Warrior's Chupong Chungprung.

At the end of the day, there is nothing all that extraordinary about Queens of Langkasuka. It's basically a popcorn movie, in the guise of a semi-historical action picture where the characters involved can use magic and/or martial arts. If that idea sounds appealing to you in any sort of way, then Queens of Langkasuka is the sort of movie that'll scratch that itch.

RATING: 7

Legend of the Tsunami Warrior

Blu-Ray Information

Magnolia's new Blu-Ray is light on special features, with a collection of trailers from other Magnolia releases and two short featurettes being the only extras on the disc. However, the movie itself is presented very well, with a crisp 1.78:1 1080P picture, and a Thai or English-dubbed soundtrack that is mastered in a Dolby DTS-HD 5.1 mix, with English and Spanish subtitles available. The film is uncut from its' original Thai release, clocking in at 119 minutes. Overall, this is a solid way to check out the movie.

The Blu-Ray and DVD are available at Amazon.

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