Netflix TV Review: Bangkok Breaking

Last night, I finished slogging through the final episode of Thai Netflix series Bangkok Breaking (2021). I almost quit halfway through Episode 3, but then I changed my mind and decided to keep watching. I wish I hadn’t. Warning: there will be spoilers.

The series follows Wanchai – who goes to Bangkok to meet his brother, Jo, but ends up being pulled into a criminal underworld of murder, drug dealing, and corruption involving criminal kingpin Hardcore, powerful businessman Wat, and a private rescue team, the Rumpalangjai Foundation – and Kat – a newbie journalist trying to carry on the investigation on corruption involving private rescue teams that her mentor, Muay, was involved in until she was severely injured in a car crash allegedly caused by Jo. Naturally, their paths cross and they not only begin working together, but also fall in love. Wanchai also befriends and starts working for a rival rescue team, the Jaitham Foundation, led by Somsak, who used to work with Jo at Rumpalangjai until he was falsely accused of stealing. To make things more complicated, Somsak’s son, Cheep, starts dating the daughter of Pratheep, the leader of the rival rescue team. All this takes place in the days leading up to the Thai New Year, which is the subject of a government-sponsored campaign about road safety being promoted by Wat.

The criminal conspiracy and Wanchai’s story should be more than enough to fill six one-hour long episodes. Unfortunately, Bangkok Breaking decided to add several subplots that it then never properly develops. It also works very hard to make things exciting, desperately so. All of this is wrapped in a mishmash of tones that never really come together, ranging from the very dark to something out of a silly teen movie. It also overdoes it with the tearful inspirational speeches, which make the show look annoyingly preachy.

Both Wanchai and Kat can be oddly passive, waiting around until the writers remember it’s time to move the plot forward. Kat’s character was the most frustrating of the two. Yes, she covers celebrity news for the gossip section, but she’s still a professional journalist who’s managed to be hired by a major newspaper. However, she came across as an angry teenager whenever she confronted Wat rather than a crusading reporter. Not only did the writers go too far with her insecurity, but they also made her a damsel in distress twice. Surely there was a better way to build up Kat and Wanchai’s relationship than turning her into a bumbling idiot. If the show really wanted her to act like that, maybe it would’ve made more sense to write her as a teen activist blogger or something.

Kat should be out investigating to add to the evidence Muay already had, but instead she spends most of the time following Wanchai around, filming rescues, and fretting about whether she’d be able to start her own website to denounce Wat and the Rumpalangjai Foundation’s corruption. Considering that all she ends up doing is create a Twitter account using her real name, it’s hard to see what the problem was in the first place. Now, if she had to do it anonymously, for fear of being arrested by the authorities to silence her on behalf of Wat, it would certainly justify her fears, as well as up the stakes. Also, her videos are basically just her making accusations without anything to back them up. Muay’s video was a good introduction, but then Kat adds nothing to it until the final confrontation. Worse, she doesn’t even use the evidence of drug dealing Somsak gave her because it would implicate Wanchai.

When Kat finally does some investigating on her own, it all looks ridiculously simple. She gets a tip about “Babylon” from rescuer/garage owner Em, looks through some old newspapers to find an address, goes there with Sek, and films the bad guys’ illegal activities, immediately getting a bunch of evidence. While it was good to see Kat doing something and being shown as resourceful, it all feels too easy. There were no guards? No surveillance? No hidden alarms to tell Hardcore and his crew when anyone entered the building or the terrain surrounding it? It’s as if the show suddenly realised it was running out of episodes and wanted to get this boring criminal conspiracy business out of the way so it could go back to doing exciting things. Wat and the Rumpalangjai Foundation's criminal enterprise isn’t even fully explained – it’s a vague jumble of drug dealing, money forging, corruption, and the typical cover-up of rich people’s bad behaviour. Also, the moment when Kat and Sek nonchalantly comment on Wat making up fake building projects so he could get government funding was just bizarre. So, they know he’s stealing from the government and do nothing with it? Even if that exchange was put there to show how rampart corruption is in Thailand, why not have them use that to get him in more trouble as they keep investigating the corrupt rescue team? We keep being shown reactions to Kat’s videos on social media and something like that would be sure to rile some people up.

Then there’s Wanchai, who somehow manages to remain bland and unblemished even when surrounded by darkness. Look, I don’t mind good people as heroes. In fact, I’m getting tired of all the morally grey leads who are practically indistinguishable from the villains they’re fighting. However, I still think the show went too far with keeping Wanchai’s hands clean. It could’ve at least had him be the one to kill Hardcore, or maybe his main henchman, before Em stepped in to help. At times, Wanchai reminded me of Damon from The Vampire Diaries, more specifically, the way that whenever the show allowed Damon to mention his awfulness, it followed that admission with the assurance by one of the “good” characters that he was being too hard on himself. Now, Wanchai is obviously nowhere near as bad as Damon, but all his talk of doing the right thing and his willingness to turn himself in felt like just a way to create drama and have Kat and the viewers swoon over how noble he was. This is made more annoying by the fact that we've seen him being beaten and threatened and shown his parents also being beaten and threatened by Hardcore and his men, so it's obvious Wanchai isn't some hardened criminal. He ends up coming across like a drama queen.

Frankly, I thought the worst thing he and Aod did was keep the drugs at the Jaitham Foundation headquarters knowing Somsak had already been in jail and this could create problems for him. That the two women rescuers were ready to join in with no regard for their boss was also insanely selfish. Their defence of voluntary rescuers not making enough money was pretty weak, considering Somsak is in the same situation and never resorted to drug dealing. And yet, there's something about how all this played out that it never felt as if the show was acknowledging that this is a morally ambiguous world. Maybe it's because it all seemed too, I don't know, simplistic? How the show handled Jo’s actions was also a problem. The insistence that he was really a good guy despite having murdered people for his bosses feels like a copout – not only does Wanchai never have to meet his changed brother, but he also gets to keep idealising him. Bangkok Breaking may have a scene where a pregnant woman is shot dead, and another where Wanchai and fellow drug mule/Jaitham rescuer Aod have to cut open a corpse to get the drugs, but in the end all the darkness is nothing but a superficial coating to score some edgy points.

The subplot with Somsak’s family drama took too much time, while also being solved too quickly. One minute his son is joining the rival Rumpalangjai team, the next, he’s risking his life to save his father and they’re reconciling. If the show is going to waste time adding more drama, it might as well develop it properly. The Thida storyline wasn’t necessary. Jo turning out to have been Muay’s original informant was more than enough reason for his bosses to want him killed, as was Wanchai’s connection with Kat. There was no need to add the affair with Wat’s mistress and a pregnancy. Also, for all the talk about the rivalry between the two rescue teams, the show never bothers to flesh out the Rumpalangjai’s crew, leaving them as a group of interchangeable jerks.

The show’s need for constant excitement makes it rush through all the storylines and look frantic at times. I’m sure the rescue sequences were difficult to shoot, but I didn’t really care for them. The scene where Somsak and Pratheep argue during the gas explosion rescue when there are still injured people in need of help was pretty dumb. The final confrontation with Wat and Pratheep was underwhelming. It was impossible to take Kat spearheading the journalists’ revolt seriously when not only is she mugging for the camera as a kid trying to look tough, but the others also act like idiots. Wat admitting to having people killed and threatening to kill Wanchai and Kat while there were still witnesses around was unbelievable. Why draw out Wat’s defeat with Kat’s kidnapping and a car chase? Just so we could see his car being “ironically” stopped by one of the billboards he ordered to be built using cheap materials? And did anyone really believe Wanchai would ever kill Wat right in front of Kat? I’m not saying I wanted him to do it, just that trying to build up suspense was silly because it was obvious the show would never go there.

As for the final scene, was Wat’s younger son being back in Bangkok and presumably having access to his father’s money and company meant to be worrying? Because nothing we were shown indicates he’d ever be able to successfully run a criminal enterprise, or even command enough respect to get some loyal henchmen to do it for him.

After watching Sleepless Society: The Series with its depiction of widespread corruption that can never be stopped, I found Bangkok Breaking’s ending, which showed the police arresting all the bad guys, save for Wat’s son, surprisingly optimistic. Though I guess it fits this show’s more simplistic approach.

People have been googling about whether there will be a Season Two, so someone must’ve liked this – I didn’t. The episodes being about an hour long didn’t help, nor did the white subtitles over a light background. Bangkok Breaking isn’t the only show/movie with that problem, though. Netflix should really do something about that.

By Wilcox