OVERVIEW
Medical bills are the real opponent in God Skin, Paween Purijitpanya’s Thai action-fantasy about Marwin, a Bangkok delivery rider whose gig-work pay cannot cover his mother’s treatment. An old friend named Itt brings him to Mirage, an invitation-only arena where wealthy patrons in VR glasses wager on fights and feed the fighters nanobot boosters, restoring health mid-round and calling up animal spirits for the next attack. As he climbs the league, the nanobots start consuming his body, just as he realizes there is more to this game than it first seems.
BACKGROUND
After Ong-Bak in 2003 and Tom-Yum-Goong in 2005 built Thailand’s reputation for Muay Thai films, Thai action output has grown thin in the years since. The producers positioned God Skin as a restart of the genre for a younger audience, built around gaming, with fights choreographed by the stunt team assembled by the choreographer of those films. It marks Purijitpanya’s first foray into action after a career focused on horror, written with Pat Pataranutaporn, an assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab who studies the effects of AI systems on human cognition. The two had worked together on Netflix’s Tomorrow and I, which Pataranutaporn co-created, and he came up with the idea of reworking Thai sacred tattooing, usually associated with spiritual protection, into programmable machines. The world premiere ran at Fantasia on August 1, in the non-competitive Horizon section.
THE REVIEW
Before going further, I should say this review is based on a working version, which is the version I received for coverage. Visual effects were unfinished, with wires visible in several shots, and the score was a temp track built from cues from Swan Lake, The Batman, Into the Spider-Verse, and Wonder Woman. Both took me out of the film more than once. What follows is a judgment of the script, the structure and the performances, and I am setting aside the finished look of the digital work, which I have not seen.
Like the fighting arena at its center, behind the animal-shifting gimmick there is a standard, if not derivative, plot, one that jumps between genres and conventions fast enough that none of the usual pitfalls become too aggravating. Marwin gets recruited, and at first will fight only one fight, but he is special! He starts winning a lot of fights and goes up the ladder. He has a sweetheart inside the operation as well, and starts to push beyond his breaking point, after many characters repeatedly say he must stop! You will be reminded of The Running Man, Squid Game, Real Steel, every sports movie ever made, but mainly one 90s blockbuster I cannot name without spoiling a plot point.
The arena scenes go on in the same manner certain anime fights do, adding new rules as the round goes on, and the choreography underneath them seems fine when they are not buried by the digital layer. Whenever the animals appear, they took me out of the film, though I cannot say how much of that is the unfinished render.
It grows tiresome through the middle section, following the sports-film beats too closely, although I like when a fighting scene is undercut with flashbacks of the characters discussing the strategy. It picks up as it moves into a man-against-the-world final act when the fights grow more organically.
Sutthirak Subvijitra holds the film together, bringing charisma to a vanilla protagonist and real intensity when the character turns angry, like a moment when he repeatedly punches a defenseless foe. Some of the mid-film twists work well and had me fooled.
While the last act works in its action, it completely fails in its ideas. The film definitely bites more than it can chew in its social commentary, which is shallow and inconsistent. As in Squid Game, blaming the system sits oddly when the protagonist made a few terrible choices that ultimately brought them to where they are. The tattoo carrying the nanochips may have a further layer for Thai audiences, and for me it felt unutilized.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Unfortunately, what I will remember most about God Skin are the arena fights and a gaming concept that comes off obnoxious. I am sure they must look better in the finished version, but they will most likely still frustrate me how they replace the choreography with the digital animals. The film is able in parts to overcome the derivative nature of its script, with a charismatic protagonist, some unexpected surprises, and a propulsive final act, but its shallow social commentary drags it down.
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- Where to watch
- Coming soon
- Where to watch
- Coming soon
Play trailer
- Original title
- หมัดเทวา ท้าเดิมพัน
- Director
- Paween Purijitpanya
- Genre
- Action, Science Fiction, Fantasy
- Cast
- Sutthirak Subvijitra, Itkron Pungkiatrussamee, Phantira Pipityakorn, Tanawat Cheawaram, Arak Amornsupasiri, Naraphat Ngodngam, Narudech Tumpitak, Sudpratthana Buasai
- Screenwriter
- Paween Purijitpanya, Kittikun Chattongkum, Jirawat Watthanakiatpanya, Pat Pataranutaporn
- Composer
- Siwat Homkham
- Cinematography
- Tatchai Aekkuttiyakorn, Prompong Charoensuk, Bunthita Phaijit
- Editor
- Wisarut Deelorm
- Country
- Language
- Thai