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Image courtesy of Little Ray Media, Picture Perfect Federation, and Picturestart
Whenever there’s news that Hollywood’s remaking anything Asian Cinema comes up with, there’s always reason for trepidation. We’re so used to getting dregs like the 2008 One Missed Call misfire (from the infinitely superior 2003 original from Japan) or the unfortunate mishandling of the Dragonball franchise at the hands of whoever decided to green-light the 2009 cinematic turd.
However, the movie gods bless us from time to time and give us an American remake of an Asian original that manages to match or even top the original source material. From 2002’s Hong Kong classic Infernal Affairs, we got the 2006 masterpiece The Departed from Martin Scorsese. Now, we have Bad Genius - a remake of the hit 2017 of the same name from Thailand in the pipeline; is it more One Missed Call than The Departed?
Image courtesy of Little Ray Media, Picture Perfect Federation, and Picturestart
The film tells the story of Lyn, a student who earns money by devising an intricate system to cheat on school examinations. Eventually, the SATs arrive, and her customers are begging for a way to outwit the annual US college entrance exam; will Lyn come to her senses and let her morals take over, or will she be blinded by the prospect of earning more?
He [director JC Lee] does his best Edgar Wright impression in crafting a stylish yet captivating film from a story that lends itself well to all of Tinseltown’s bells and whistles.
When the original Bad Genius premiered in 2017, it was a breath of fresh air in a Southeast Asian film landscape saturated with horror films and rom-coms. Bad Genius reminded audiences of the power of Asian cinema with its compelling story, skillful filmmaking, and unusual heist film structure (for an Asian film) that effectively placed audiences in the middle of the action. However, it wasn’t perfect and there was a feeling that the story could’ve benefited more from a bit of Hollywood shine.
That’s exactly what director JC Lee did with his handling of the 2024 remake, as he does his best Edgar Wright impression in crafting a stylish yet captivating film from a story that lends itself well to all of Tinseltown’s bells and whistles. In the 2017 original, there’s a sequence that first shows the usage of Lyn’s piano playing skills to help others cheat in a preliminary school exam; the original plays this almost melodramatically, as if we were watching a master ballerina ply her craft. Here, Lee stages the sequence with a tense but exciting energy (in addition to the excellent editing by Franklin Peterson and music by Marius De Vries and Matt Robertson) that just sweeps up its audience in the ‘heist film’ energy of it all.
It does deviate from the 2017 original with an ending that’s has more ‘stick it to the man” energy, and that’s for the best. In a world where ‘the man’ gets away with more and more BS by taking advantage of the little guy, we’re treated a fun little respite where the ‘bad genius’ gets to keep a little for themselves too.
CINEGEEK RATING: B+
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