Hola Dannie aqui!
AICN is happy to welcome a new addition to our vast spy network Tron! His first review for us is "Bad Genius" I included the trailer at the bottom enjoy!
Bad Genius
Director: Nattawut Poonpiriya
Starring: Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying, Chanin Santinatornkul, Eisaya Hosuwan, Teeradon Supapunpinyo
Do you remember a pretty good little heist/caper from 2004 called The Perfect Score, where Erika Christensen, Matthew Lillard, Captain America and the Black Widow break into the Princeton Testing Center in an attempt to steal the SAT answers in an effort to get perfect scores? Bad Genius is a Thai heist thriller in the same vein about students attempting to scam the International SAT test in an effort to ensure perfect scores. Bad Genius is not a remake, rather a thriller in the same mold based on true events with more of an emphasis on class issues and teen social issues. However, if you were pleasantly surprised by how good The Perfect Score was chances are you'll enjoy Bad Genius, which I believe was a far superior film... and I'm a fan of The Perfect Score!
Lynn (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying) is a straight-A secondary school girl living with her father who is a teacher. He gets her enrolled into a prestigious school as he wants her to have all the advantages that he didn't have. She quickly asserts herself as one of the top two students in the school, along with a kid named Bank (Chanin Santinatornkul), a prudish do-gooder no one really likes. Lynn becomes friends with a nice but intellectually challenged girl named Grace (Eisaya Hosuwan) who convinces Lynn to tutor her. However, Grace has an ulterior motive. She dates a super-rich kid named Pat (Teeradon Supapunpinyo) who is also not too bright. Pat's problem is his rich dad graduated from Boston University and has a desire is to see Pat graduate from his alma mater. Pat, however, is as dumb as a stump so this is going to prove difficult unless he can get Lynn to tutor him too for a ridiculous sum of money... well, him and a few friends, each one paying a ridiculous sum. Lynn is resistant until she finds out the school she goes to extorts the parents of students to pay a maintenance fee above and beyond tuition and she is scandalized her poor, hard-working father is being extorted like that. Now it's game on.
Lynn is a musical genius as well and, since almost all the tests they take are standardized, she devises simple musical cues with her fingers that transmit the answers during the test. This works fantastically, even when the school puts out multiple copies of the same test until one of the dumber members of the group lets slip to Bank that he's not smart enough to do the music thing and offers him money to let him cheat. Bank immediately narcs the dumb kid out, resulting in Lynn getting reprimanded by the school and almost expelled. Instead it blows her chance for a scholarship, a scholarship in which her only competition was Bank. With her life in a downward spiral, Pat comes up with a plan to cheat the STIC test (the International SAT's) which will earn them millions of dollars. Lynn doesn't see a way to do it until she studies time zones and figures out that Australia will technically take the test first so if she flies to Australia and memorizes all the answers she can transmit them back to Thailand and they can all get rich as well as posting a fantastic score on the test. However, they can only do it with Bank's help and since he's such a good guy he'd never assist them in a scam of this nature. In a bizarre twist of fate, Bank is beaten up while he attempts to help his poor mother run her laundry service and misses the test, thus ruining his future as well. He is brought in by Lynn and Pat and agrees to fly to Australia and help Lynn memorize the answers and transmit them back until the night before they leave and Pat lets it slip he paid the thugs to beat Bank up, putting the scheme in jeopardy. Can Lynn and Pat convince Bank to continue on with the job? How much more will it cost them? Will Lynn go through with the scam when she finds out Bank was set up by Pat? Will they be able to work together in Australia to pull the scam off? Is Australia nice this time of year?
I had heard that several people found Bad Genius to be slow and a little boring but I would very much disagree with that assessment. Bad Genius manages to build a tension in the film from the first test forward which is surprisingly effective. Everything goes swimmingly until the school pulls a few tricks on Lynn and her cohorts, forcing them to come up with some very creative solutions to standard problems, such as the aforementioned multiple test copies. The screenwriters anticipate a lot of problem areas by having researched methods of standardized tests as well as actual methods for cheating those types of exams as seen on the news. The script took a year and a half to complete and the story was developed in the vein of a Hollywood thriller while still being grounded in socio-political framework that would be relatable to a Thai audience and they succeeded like gangbusters, becoming the highest-grossing Thai film of 2017 and garnering tons of International acclaims, such as this piece right here. The 'will they get caught and when/how' question permeates the narrative and builds quite a bit of dramatic tension as you know something's going to go horribly wrong, then surprise when the cast extricates themselves from the dilemma only to go rushing into the next untenable situation... and the next... and the next.
Part of what makes Bad Genius work so well is the cast, made up of largely unknown actors. The character of Lynn, especially, was extremely well done and the actress, Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying, was a fashion model before taking on the role. The other supporting cast had also not been in a feature film before this one yet they do such a good job of inviting you into the characters that I'm sure this will not be their last effort. Both Lynn and Bank are lower-class kids who have a real desire to help their families and raise themselves up from their underclass lives through education while Pat and Grace are rich kids who also seek the approval of their parents through academia. They have money but no intellectual aptitude while Bank and Lynn have all the brains in the world but no money with which to ease their lives. It's when these two economic classes meet that decisions are made that could change all of their lives for the better.... provided they can get over the illegality of their plans. Several times the question is put forth to Lynn, “wouldn't it be better to teach them?” and it's one of the driving themes of the picture – difficulty versus ease. Risk versus reward. Intelligence versus money. Rich versus poor. All wrapped up in a caper film that's very much deserving of attention due to the fact that the filmmakers were very smart about posing those questions in a movie that walks a tightrope between the morality of the kid's choices aside a thrilling adventure yarn and damned if it doesn't succeed mightily.
Bad Genius is a caper film that manages to balance Thai social and political themes among the framework of a modern Hollywood thriller and manages to succeed on both levels, largely due to a great cast, a tightly researched script grounded in real life events and an idea that lends itself well to entertainment and commentary. The film has proven to be a success overseas, confirming the concept isn't just limited to Asian audiences and provides more than it's share of entertainment value, taking a mundane subject and infusing it with genuine thrills and suspense. It's no surprise, then, that Bad Genius comes HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Tron
