Tears of the Black Tiger Isn’t Afraid to Go Big (Thank God)

The iconography of the western, the melodrama, and the romance all have one thing in common: they aren’t afraid to go big. Cowboys saunter over rolling plains and plot revenge, rain pours over characters’ faces as betrayal and heartbreak make their marks, and the inherent thrill of a first kiss in a dark alley can shake a film to its core. In these movies, the scenery, emotions, and yearning are all larger than life and don’t shy away from the outwardly ridiculous. Wisit Sasanatieng’s Tears of the Black Tiger takes cues from those movies and runs with it, creating an ambitious act of cinematic alchemy that’s worth seeing on the big screen. 

Made in 2000, but unreleased in its original form in the US until 2007, Tears director Sasanatieng’s mashup of Thai melodramas of the 1950s and 1960s, Douglas Sirk movies, and the slow-motion bloodshed of Sam Peckinpah pulls off a magic trick: taking these disparate influences and turning them into something singular. The story of Dum (Chartchai Ngamsan), a peasant boy turned bandit, and his childhood sweetheart Rumpoey (Stella Malucchi), Tears of the Black Tiger could have simply been a sweeping romance. Instead, because of its fearless ability to play with the genres that inspired it, we also get an exploitation movie, a thrilling western, and a bloody good time all around. 

Here, like in every great, sweeping genre picture, the movie revels in maximalist joy operating on all fronts. If you’re looking for something reserved and steady, you won’t find it here, thank God. Here, the beaches and jungles of Thailand have a romantic technicolor sheen, the blood flows, and the cowboys are armed with rocket launchers. When Dum and his frenemy, Mahesuan (Supakorn Kitsuwon) have a showdown, instead of an old west town deserted at high noon—they share a grassy field with a surreal, beautifully painted background behind them. This movie cares too much about the emotions and visuals at play to care about anchoring itself to reality. It’s all the better for it, too. Who wants a story with so many juicy elements - romance, adventure, vicious bloodshed—to whisper its way through its runtime? No, thankfully, the story of Dum and Rumpoey is treated with all the delicious maximalism every great romance deserves. 

Tears of the Black Tiger understands that when you’re in love, every stake and sensation is elevated to the highest level possible. When you’re in love in the middle of a bloody, Western-tinged thriller, it feels like the stakes are even higher —an impossibly ridiculous, exquisite kind of tension. Who knew that the breathlessness of a star-crossed romance could mesh so well with the unhinged fury of flying bullets and appendages? Director Sasantieng understands that the stakes of the heart are as important and as fatal as any sharpshooter out for blood. 

The performances in Tears of the Black Tiger are also all maximalist perfection worthy of this wild ride. Ngamsan is all silent yearning and simmering, angry heat as Dum. Malucchi (in her first of only two film roles she’d perform in) is stunning, full of romantic melancholy as Rumpoey. Especially worth noting is Kitsuwon as Mahesuan, deliciously full of bravado and bluster, eating up every scene he’s in. They are all a delight to watch on screen and illustrate the specific, distinct blend of genres at work here. 

From the jump, Tears of the Black Tiger is a maximalist fever dream worth seeing. Full of big swings, sweeping scenery, and unhinged violence, it’s a singular vision that stood out at the time of its release and still makes a bloody mark today.