With Elephant White, Djimon Hounsou makes his first step out of the shadow of other leading men to take the title himself. Hounsou’s task in this case is no small feat as the majority of the film rests in his performance with no others to keep it afloat. To his credit, he pulls it off admirably, with the faults falling on the part of Kevin Bacon, an overdone plot, and a weak twist which both the director and screenwriter placed too much faith in. Yet the film is bearable and at times enjoyable and stands as one of the best films I’ve ever seen when it comes to its use of digital cameras; where many low-budget films end up looking shoddy thanks to the digital camera use, Elephant White looks incredibly vibrant and the film as a whole receives a huge bump. It’s almost enough to redeem it.
Sharpshooting mercenary Curtie Church (Hounsou) has taken on a contract in Bangkok, Thailand to track down members of a prostitution ring and locate a girl who they’ve kidnapped. He waits for his chance to strike against the brothel, where the women are hooked on heroine to entice them to stay, and passes the time in conversation with an escaped prostitute. In the process, Church’s sense of morality takes over and he begins a one-man vendetta against the two rival prostitution rings and lays waste to them from the tops of buildings courtesy of some heavy-duty sniper rifles supplied by his Australian arms dealer acquaintance (Kevin Bacon). As he moves forward, he becomes the focal point of both rings’ wrath resulting in quite a few fun gunfights and some solid martial arts action.
The story is a simple mercenary with a heart of gold concept and it only ever tries to be more than that when it strays into spiritual waters. The attempt at adding depth in this fashion is muddled and borderline nonsensical. Luckily, compared to the big “reveal” at the end, the religious angle is mild. The twist is utterly out of place and in fact unnecessary since it speaks to the character of Church which the writer did a poor job of establishing as being a cash-oriented killer before showing us he has a soft side. In fact, the film seems all too eager to jump right into developing that side of him.
Djimon Hounsou started off as the strong, soulful character in films like Amistad, Gladiator, and The Four Feathers. Through the years he’s landed increasingly prominent roles, but has always been a side player. Elephant White marks a huge step for him and it’s one that gives him lots of quiet brooding time and personal conversations to help him flesh out people’s impressions of him as an actor. He’s got nuance and his delivery is typically quite good.
In fact, Hounsou looks even more like a brilliant actor when you measure him up against the other prevalent performance in the film: Kevin Bacon’s shamefully bad “Australian” arms dealer. Why Bacon attempted the accent he uses here, we’ll never know – but it’s awful. It’s obnoxious and distracting and detracts from every scene he’s in. It’s a mind-boggling choice that they opted for the accent.
The faults of the film aside, it’s the visuals that made this one stand out. Films captured with digital cameras can sometimes have an aimless quality to the cinematography. Elephant White, by contrast, has some beautiful framing and camera work and the high-resolution gives the film a high visual pedigree. It’s an impressive-looking film, and if you place lots of emphasis in visuals, Elephant White’s photography might be enough to help you forgive Bacon and story shortfalls.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
It’s a sad state of affairs when a DVD distributor thinks it can count 1080p HD, Dolby TrueHD, subtitles, and previews as legitimate extra features. They don’t count as extras. Along with the film, those should be requirements for any Blu-ray release. Millennium Films didn’t do anyone any favors in the extras department. It would have been nice to at the very least have a commentary from director Prachya Pinkaew and Kevin Bacon so we could have an explanation for that accent.
"Elephant White" is on sale May 17, 2011 and is rated R. Action. Directed by Prachya Pinkaew. Written by Kevin Bernhardt. Starring Djimon Hounsou, Kevin Bacon, Jirantanin Pitakporntrakul.
