Headshot

One of the best Thai films to hit local shores this year and Thailand’s entry for Best Foreign Language Oscar at the upcoming 85^th Academy Awards, Headshot is a stylish crime drama that makes highly effective use of a non-linear structure to offset its fairly straightforward storyline.

Now, I’ve seen films where characters lost or gained sight, or where near-blind people had visions of murders or the like, but I can’t ever recall watching a film where the lead character’s vision was inverted. At any rate it’s an interesting device, and upon discovering his affliction Tul unsurprisingly loses both his enthusiasm and his aptitude for the hitman caper. His bosses don’t take kindly to quitters however...
 

Headshot was directed by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, one of the darlings of the ‘Thai New Wave’ whose previous works include some of the most highly-regarded Thai films of the past decade and a half, including 6ixtynin9 and Last Life in the Universe. Gritty crime thrillers have long been his bread and butter, and his latest outing shows him to have honed his skills to a rare degree - Headshot is lean, atmospheric and artfully constructed to continually catch viewers off balance. While somewhat more casually attired than Alain Delon, Tul nonetheless still manages to give off an appropriately Le Samourai-esque loner assassin vibe, and he is ably assisted by the smouldering Chanokporn Sayoungkul as the requisite femme fatale whom he may or may not be able to trust. A highly accomplished outing, and one nigh on unmissable for fans of quality Asian cinema.