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Audio Format: DD 5.1 Surround Video Format: Widescreen 1.85:1 Languages: Thai Subtitles: English Region Code: ALL Year Made: 2001 Running Time: 118
 The heroic Siamese war epic Bang Rajan (2001) is all scorched earth, depicting the legendary courage and stamina of a single village battling the invading Burmese army in 1765. As hokey as Braveheart and yet much more apocalyptic, Thanit Jitnukul's muscular jungle bloodbath outdoes Hollywood's recent efforts at combat ultra-realism, if only because its chaotic landscape is so naturally shot and its machete-thwack conflict so unambiguous.
The climactic free-for-all is a dismayingly ferocious portrait of pre-technological warfare. (The Thai movie industry doesn't seem to suffer the foolishness of liability insurance.) Unlike the only other Thai films on the local radar (Mysterious Object at Noon and the Miramax dust-gatherer Tears of the Black Tiger), Bang Rajan was a record-setting smash at home.
 In 1765, during the legendary struggle between the Burmese and Siamese empires in what is now present- day Thailand, the Burmese forces advanced on the Siamese capital, Ayutthaya. Two vast armies descended on the city by different routes. More than 100,000 Burmese troops entered Siam from the west and arrived at the city unhindered while the other column of 100,000, invading from the north, found themselves delayed for a full five months by the most unlikely of foes.
Against impossible odds, a small village of ordinary men and women with extraordinary courage withstood the advances of the Burmese juggernaut over and over again. As the Burmese suppression of the surrounding countryside grew more brutal, refugees, who could run no more, came to stand and fight with the villagers. Trading their ploughs for swords, they fought for their homes, their dignity and their lives. With no aid from the capital, the farmers battled for their freedom through eight bloody clashes using innovative tactics and displaying unfaltering bravery until Burma finally turned the sum of its wrath on the village.
The tale of these courageous villagers has endured, spreading throughout empires and across centuries to live on in the hearts and minds of the Siamese for all time. Conceived as an anti-war statement and featuring some of the most realistic fighting scenes in Thai cinema, Jitnukul?s version of this legendary tale (the third to be made) has become one of its native country?s highest grossing films.
This is the legend of Bang Rajan.
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