ASK ANY film teacher or film-festival submissions person: The gangsta film is the most popular and probably the easiest kind of movie for a first-time director. The San Diego-made Bang Bang only really has the novelty of being about Asian American gangstas—or, as the Vietnamese-American hero played by Thai Ngo says in a song describing himself, “gooksta.”
It’s a movie about the thug life, but it’s not thuggish, and there is a sense of pity and waste in the criminal career of two pals. One is a well-off Taiwanese student named Charlie (David Huynh), a latchkey kid drawn to the life of crime. The other is his working-class pal Justin (Ngo) who is sick of the constant fighting and the drug dealing, and who longs to get out of the life.
Justin especially gets tired of playing when he meets a good girl who works as a florist’s store, even as he’s being groomed to take over the local marijuana racket by his friend Rocky. Rocky is played by Walter Wong, the best actor in the picture by a long distance, and the one who looks the most like he knows something about street life.
Director Byron Qiao has talent on his side; he knows how to make the film symmetrical, starting and ending with an act of violence. Intelligently, he covers for the fight sequences where the choreography may not be 100 percent by going wide, long or shooting the scene through a window. None of these party, park or parking-lot brawls are as efficient or as haunting as the mysterious late-night drive-by shooting captured with a long lens. Still, one method of dealing with fights—cutting a la Raging Bull to black & white freeze frames—teeters on the edge of laughable when it’s used so many times, particularly when used to cover a domestic fight between Justin’s mom and her lay-about boyfriend.
The answer to these problems is more rehearsal, and there are a few scenes too many where another take on the dialogue would have helped. Ultimately, the director has followed a well-beaten path, but the gangsta fans who want to escape the stereotype of being model minorities should come out for it. Music by Thai, Miki Tae, Far East Movement, D.U.S.T., TraxMyth and Snacky Chan.
Bang Bang
Plays June 15-16 and 19 at Camera 12 in San Jose
