He hopes these four contracts to be his last, but he quickly finds himself immersed in the city's corrupt and dirty lifestyle, which the filmmakers successfully project via neon-lit street shots and hyper nightclub scenes. The Bangkok sub-culture story delves deeper into a cleaner tourist's take on crime and corruption. Yet without the technical nastiness and fatal realism that made the original Thai version so exciting, this rendition feels like a lame excuse to present the various ways in which a bullet can pierce a skull, rather than an edgy portrait of the Asian world gone wrong.

Exterior-based assassination sequences, highlighted by a lengthy boat chase set inside a picturesque floating market, make the first half easier to digest. But Joe's weird and unexplained character change halfway through, marked by his odd teacher-pupil relationship with Kong and his altogether platonic affair with an attractive pharmacist (pop singer Charlie Young) is never fully realized, adding little resonance to the multiple killings that follow. A purely average, but at times satisfying crime thriller.