Verdict
Summary
If The Golden Triangle had been made a few years later in Italy with at least one American or European star playing the undercover cop, it would be a B+ exploitation film, but because it has a less-than stellar very low budget Asian (namely, Thai) aesthetic, the film is a muddled, indistinct slog. The narrative is sometimes sloppy and confusing, and the mere fact that the hero of the film is never even given a name shows how short sighted the film is on the whole. I wanted to like this one with its almost nonstop action (sometimes the action scenes are over so abruptly that it’s jarring), exotic locales, and large-scale battle scenes, but it never quite achieves true action-tastic greatness even on its already lowbrow scale.
Plot:
An undercover cop and a drug trafficker collide when they enter “the golden triangle” of Asia.
Review:
Tony Wong (Lo Lieh) is a tough drug trafficker who escapes police and ends up fleeing to Thailand where he travels in dark circles, finding himself in the shadowy world of opium smuggling. On the flipside, there’s a nameless undercover cop (played by Sombat Metanee) who is just waiting for his chance to be inducted into the opium empire. The cop takes his chance when he saves a thug from being clobbered and killed when he’s caught cheating at gambling. Showing himself to be a formidable fighter, the cop is taken under the wing of the thug, who takes him to his employer, a sort of empress of opium (played by Tian Ni), who rules over an entire army of soldiers who do her bidding. It’s all about opium: the villages all over “The Golden Triangle” (a region in Southeast Asia that includes Thailand, Laos, Myanmar) harvest poppies, then must load all of it on horses or trucks to be processed and sold, which is where things get dangerous when rival armies raid and slaughter the caravans before they reach their destinations. Tony joins one of the raiding armies, and the undercover cop is inducted into the empress’s army, and there will come a time when a huge raid (think the fourth Rambo movie where jeeps with machine guns mow down hundreds of guys) levels the playing field, with the ultimate prize of raw opium up for grabs.
If The Golden Triangle had been made a few years later in Italy with at least one American or European star playing the undercover cop, it would be a B+ exploitation film, but because it has a less-than stellar very low budget Asian (namely, Thai) aesthetic, the film is a muddled, indistinct slog. The narrative is sometimes sloppy and confusing, and the mere fact that the hero of the film is never even given a name shows how short sighted the film is on the whole. I wanted to like this one with its almost nonstop action (sometimes the action scenes are over so abruptly that it’s jarring), exotic locales, and large-scale battle scenes, but it never quite achieves true action-tastic greatness even on its already lowbrow scale. It’s one of those types of pictures where everybody gets a machine gun, but no one really hits a target unless the “plot” says so. This Hong Kong / Thai co-production was directed by Wu Ma and Rome Bunnag.
Dark Force Entertainment’s Blu-ray release of The Golden Triangle is presented in an uncut 95 minute version from a new 2K scan with color correction, but honestly the transfer is murky and sometimes even choppy. I have a feeling that this is the best the movie is ever going to look, and if you’re considering it for your collection, this is likely the best you’ll ever get. It’s numbered 48 on the spine.