The Legend of Suriyothai (2001)

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

I can understand why this film received rave reviews in Thailand and among the Thais in the US. The sets, the costumes, the battle scenes are exquisite. There are many scenes that show activity of daily living in Thailand in the olden days. Many of those are quite rare these days. It's very good from a historical and cultural point of view. It's the best efforts in Thai cinematography I've seen thus far and much better than a lot of junk that comes out of Hollywood.However, as an entertainment, it's quite lacking. I agree with some comments here that the acting is wooden and the story line disjointed. I do think it will do very well on the History Channel, or as a television series. In time, I hope acting, story lines, and editing in Thai movies will improve and deserve a second look.

I had heard a lot about this movie and I rented the Coppola version. While the costumes and sets were impressive, and the battle scenes were alright, in general I didn't like it. The acting seemed really wooden (I realize they're royalty, but it still seemed forced), the dialogue was cheesy. The emotions seemed to come out of nowhere - all of a sudden, people were in love, or angry, or what have you. It seemed like they were trying to tell us this was an amazing story, rather than making us feel that it was. And frankly, I didn't think it was that impressive - the ending seemed kind of pointless and forced to me, even though it's a true story.

Personally, I enjoyed this movie a lot. The cinematography was excellent. The story was very intriguing/ well written. I found to give good background, not too much, just the right amount. This movie is somewhat of East Asian Braveheart. I say somewhat because I think this movie is better. It sticks with giving you what you need to understand this woman Suriyothai without delving into silly romances/drama which is what Braveheart did. More to the point.

I guess they gave it a shot. It's kinda like how Shiri was one of the first Korean movies to hit outside of Korea... but in comparison w/ films outside of the country it was JUNK. That would probably be the case w/ this film. I'm sure it was huge in Thailand, but in the States... "better luck tomorrow"... hahaha.. get it? hahaha... okay.. that's enough of that... The costumes and culture was probably the only thing going for the film. I don't know if everyone was a bad actor if if that's just the way the speak. Suriyothai was not developed enough or wasn't significant enough to be titled that way. It was like a huge history lesson in a sense. Poor editing, poor battle scenes, poor acting. I would usually give this film a 4 but I'm giving it 1 to balance out the other poor reviews.