SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Lack of good storyline.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I enjoyed ELEPHANT WHITE for what it is: an unassuming Thai action flick with a couple of decent performances, some strong choreography from ONG BAK director Prachya Pinkaew, and plenty of action to recommend it. Films like this are a dime a dozen and yet the strength of the central character and the filming style kept me watching and entertained despite various flaws in the narrative.Djimon Hounsou is well cast as an assassin, a sniper who latest job is to take down a drugs gang who've turned a businessman's daughter into a heroin accident. Hounsou is a tough, taciturn hero and his role as a sniper leads to some great assassination scenes; I think snipers are underutilised in cinema and I love watching films about them. Helping Hounsou is an out-of-place Kevin Bacon, giving a hilarious performance (complete with Dick Van Dyke style Cockney accent) as an arms dealer.There's plenty of action here, alongside a slim storyline with at least one good twist I didn't see coming. Some of the story is a cheat - there's a huge ruckus in a wood which turns out to be a dream - but other scenes, like the assault on the brothel, are exemplary. The experience is soured slightly by a hugely unbelievable and anti-climatic ending, but apart from that this is solid stuff.

Elephant White is a B Grade movie. But does that necessarily mean it's bad? NO it doesn't! Djimon Hounsou really impressed me - or should I say, his character did. I get really sick of movies where the hero only disables bad guys so that, after a remarkably fast recovery, they come back to give him more aggravation. Not so Curtie. He is a professional killer who eliminated low-lives very effectively and permanently! Of course, as is so typical with films like this, the bad guys are always terrible shots and probably couldn't hit a barn door at ten paces which is always annoying. Nevertheless, in this movie Curtie (Djimon) does get hit. Fortunately, of course, it wasn't fatal but it certainly gave the film a bit more credibility.Kevin Bacon really suited playing an Englishman. I have never been much of a KB fan but, for some reason that I can't pinpoint, as a "pom" he was excellent. Someone else (an American) has written that Kevin's English accent was terrible and I would like to ask him how he knows. Kevin's English accent was great and really suited the part! Jason Statham eat your heart out!!Since I didn't read the IMDb page about this movie, I didn't know that there was a fantasy element - which may or may not have been a good thing depending how you look at it. So when some weird things started happening I was quite taken by surprise. I'm not sure that the film actually needed that either.Viewers should also bear in mind that this is a Thai film. The director Pracha Pinkaew is Thai and had six previous exploits as a director (half of those with Thai titles) and so they should remember that cultural differences are bound to be evident. He is obviously respected among his peers enough to have been elected president of the Thai Film Directors' Association.So watch Elephant White with an open mind and enjoy it for what it is. The messages at the beginning of the end credits make it obvious that a statement was being made as well as presented in an entertaining manner. And next time you go to Thailand for a holiday, just think about it.

Human trafficking and child prostitution are the focal points of this very dark, noisy, brutally frank film, and if those preliminary adjectives don't deter then there are a few reasons to watch this direct to DVD film, mainly the contribution of producer/star Djimon Hounsou. Thai director Prachya Pinkaew holds this slaughter of the bad guys together fairly well and the minimal script by Kevin Bernhardt attempts to infuse the bitter story with a dollop of mysticism (the title is the clue). The acting by a very large cast of Thai actors is basically relegated to shooting and getting shot so there isn't a lot of character development possible.The setting is Bangkok where Curtie Church (Djimon Hounsou) who is a prolific professional assassin who has accumulating a sizable cash reserve from his trade. His impressive store of weapons (a larger cash of bizarre guns has never been so visible!) is provided by his English arms dealer Jimmy (Kevin Bacon). Curtie wishes to retire from his sordid role and is on his last assignment when he is joined by a strange and beautiful young girl name Mae (Jirantanin Pitakporntrakul). During the completion of his final score, Curtie is annoyed by Mae who wonders why the assassin is killing in the first place. Curtie admits it is for the money, but the somewhat ethereal Mae informs him that other evil men need his expertise and brand of justice: Curtie becomes involved in a mission to stop the trafficking of child prostitutes by eliminating those who deal in human flesh.For the most part the film is about killing and is a constant stream of assassinations by a variety to weapons and chases. Hounsou is solid, manages to capture some tenderness in his relationship with Pitakporntrakul, and the efforts to make the film have mystical effects almost works at times. Kevin Bacon does his best in a thankless role but is bogged down with a twitchy British accent. This is definitely not a film for the easily disturbed, but for proponents of action and mounting killings the film should satisfy. And it does address the ongoing global problem of sex trafficking. Maybe someone will notice this problem soon. Grady Harp

OK I read the other reviews of this film before I decided to watch it, and to be honest I really don't know what the people who gave this film a really bad review, are talking about. I mean alright it was not an Oscar winner, but come on it wasn't a bad film, in fact I enjoyed it. The action scenes were shot well, and the dialogue while not fantastic, it was enough to keep you interested. Moreover, the story line about human trafficking and child prostitution is a one which is very real and about time more is done to tackle it in the real world, anyway the twist at the end of the film was surprising and completed the well rounded story. I have to say that Djimon Hounsou is a fantastic actor and did not disappoint in this film, Kevin Bacon was alright as well apart from the strange accent ( I actually thought my speakers were broken when he first began to talk !, I am from the UK and trust me no one talks like that here !). I was also impressed by Jirantanin Pitakporntrakul, who I thought acted really well and played a really good character, Mae and I hope to see her in more films in the future.So would I recommend this film, well the answer is yes, it was an action packed film with a good story line and good acting, and more importantly the bad guys get their asses kicked, which is something that we don't really see to much of nowadays.