Inadvertently starting a riot at the Cannes Film Festival is probably not the best way to make friends and influence people but it certainly makes for an invigorating evening. It was in 2000 when I was there with a group of 'producers' trying to interest wheelers and dealers in a film project when we were suddenly 'adopted' by a television crew who attempted to use us as leverage to get themselves into the celebrity laden MTV party. Push quickly came to shove, the security Gestapo got irate and before we knew it, it was war! The fracas in question had, according to news reports, George Clooney and the All Saints cowering under tables. As chairs began to fly and the gendarmes got busy with the batons we escaped the mayhem and stood and watched it from across the rue unaware that there was another, more constructive, upheaval taking place on the Cote D'azure with the first ever entry from Thailand – Tears of the Black Tiger.<br /><br />'Tiger' was about to herald in the so called 'Thai New Wave' challenging the dominance of Japan and Hong Kong as the prime movers and shakers of Asian cinema – and what an debut! <br /><br />A lysergic western that tells the tale of a young man whose family is murdered and so joins up with a gang of bandits with vengeance on his mind. He soon builds a reputation earning him the name Black Tiger. His gang inevitability come into conflict with the local establishment, but when he discovers his childhood sweetheart is to marry a police captain he struggles to maintain peace between the gangs and the authorities but his efforts (much like our film project bid) quickly spiral into untold chaos. <br /><br />Taking place between parallel dimensions of a colour-saturated Wild West and contemporary Bangkok, Tears of the Black Tiger is a moving 3D postcard of retro-camp kitsch, and because of this, the sudden explosions of (literally) teeth shattering violence are all the more outrageous. The term 'visual feast' seems made for director Wisit Sasanatieng's masterpiece as it takes 50's melodramas, Spaghetti Western's (or should that be Noodle Eastern's?) and Anime action and puts them through the wringer, resulting in a film that embraces as many conventions as it seems to demolish .<br /><br />As my own attempts to storm the Bastille of the film industry have, to date, yielded little fruit, I appreciate all the more a film that appears to have flaunted all the rules and has no agenda but its own. 'Tears of the Black Tiger' is a brilliant example of revolt sans riot.