Not a Thai film, with a mispelled "Bangkok" in the title, a Hong Kong crime film largely set in the Mangkok neighborhood. Gritty, well-executed, but only marginally above the better such efforts, the film holds one's attention, even as it seems to (ironically) stretch repeatedly into new twists.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430772/
There might be no better-yet-accessible film for understanding the birth of the modern state of Israel -- and for understanding the conflicts between the the indigenous populations and the Israelis, and amongst the Israelis themselves. The latter conflict is seldom noted by the popular media outside of Israel. What is both impressive and disheartening, in many ways the conflicts have not changed during the past six decades. Rather, the divisions have grown along the same lines, to the point where one can appear to hope, at best, for a lasting detente.
Unlike other epics from that era, designed to bring the insular American sensibility into contact with another culture, Exodus still feels sophisticated and modern. Contrast this with, say, Sayonara, which feels ridiculously dated -- and is entertaining now as camp, rather than for its content. A case in point: In Sayonara, Ricardo Montablan plays a famous Kabuki actor -- and the producers apparently consider his skin color and accent when combined with a little makeup and a few Japanese words to be "Asian enough" to fool Americans. There are few such gaffes in Exodus. Newman's Ari is frightfully spot-on for what such an Israel looks like, sounds like, and acts like -- both then and now. Eva Marie Saint does a fine job of being the surrogate for the audience watching Exodus, something that Brando, in Sayonara, in his encumbered position as an American icon, can't quite pull off.
So what's Exodus' downside? Although the film tries to be balanced, the sympathy clearly lies with one set of political aspirations -- and presents those as the most reasonable. This is perhaps inevitable but unfortunate because the reality was and is a set of irreconcilable differences.
(The DVD is far from ideal: While presented in the 2.35:1 widescreen format of the theatrical presentation -- yeah! -- it is not anamorphic, and appears to be sourced from the same composite video master used for the laserdisc. The only thing lower than the video fidelity is the audio fidelity. I have sympathy with those that complain about surround re-mixes of classic films from multichannel sources, but am sometimes pleasantly surprised by the results. Exodus is horrible, with the entire soundtrack being panned to various places at various times, hampering the already low quality of the original dialog and score recordings.)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053804/