Butterfly Man Details

A laudable motive and some glorious scenery are not enough to distract from the clichés and caricatures that blight this mediocre exposé of the seedy underside of Thai tourism. The drama gets off to a shaky start with British backpacker Stuart Laing's contrived Bangkok break-up with sulky girlfriend Kirsty Mitchell. Things improve marginally when Laing embarks on a cross-cultural romance with Thai masseuse Napakpapha Nakprasitte, but the action lurches back to lumpen melodrama when penury drives him into the clutches of a gang of human traffickers. Writer/director Kaprice Kea's visual sense is fine, but his pacing is wayward and Laing's prosaic performance also does the production no favours.

Danny Boyle may have come a cropper with The Beach, but that hasn't deterred Bangkok-based British expat Kaprice Kea... read more on Time Out