Between bullet-bending bandits, occult resurrection magic, and a horde of missing Japanese gold, 4 Tigers is not your average WWII period piece. Director Kongkiat Komesiri, who’s best known to Thai moviegoers for his Khun Pan trilogy about a legendary sorcerer-detective, returns to that trilogy’s universe with a prequel spinoff about four legendary bandits — Bai, Dam, Mahesuan, and Fai — who will eventually become nemeses of the detective. In 4 Tigers, though, this quad is recruited by a glamorous actress-agent named Rosarin (Mashannoad Suvalmas) to assassinate Field Marshal Lert, a fictional military strongman whose Japanese-allied wartime rule loosely recalls that of Plaek Phibunsongkhram, Thailand’s actual WWII-era dictator.
Each of the eponymous “four tigers” has a special power worthy of a superhero team-up: Bai (Arak Amornsupasiri) bends bullets, Dam (Phakin Khamwilaisak) packs a ridiculously powerful punch, Mahesuan (Mario Maurer) wears amulets that make him bulletproof, and Fai (Sukollawat Kanaros) commands spells that can destroy those around him. Naturally, they start out despising each other, and much of the film’s pleasure comes from watching that rivalry curdle into an uneasy alliance as successive assassination attempts fail.
4 Tigers earns its “Spaghetti Western”—or perhaps “Pad Thai Western”—tag through genuinely excellent action scenes: gun-fu, fistfights, swordplay, and brawls against triad hordes all land with real choreographic craft, matched by handsome production design that leans on resplendent historical architecture and central Thailand’s beautiful countryside. The folklore elements — protective amulets, resurrection spells — bring welcome local flavor that should appeal to genre fans tired of standard Anglophone action fare. However, viewers should be warned that logic behind the film’s folkloric elements grows murkier as the film barrels into a third act full of supernatural twists; international viewers unfamiliar with Thai folklore, or the Khun Phan franchise, may lose the thread. Pacing is the bigger liability: at 2 hours and 18 minutes, 4 Tigers drags whenever it pauses to sort out who’s allying or betraying whom, and its initial driver of assassinating Field Marshal Lert gets diluted amid its characters’ shifting allegiances and new supernatural revelations.
What’s most interesting, though, is the film’s politics. 4 Tigers is fairly blunt in its anti-authoritarian streak — festival programmers have called it a “damning portrait” of Thailand’s political elite. Not only does Rosarin star in a wartime propaganda film whose gushing praise for military rule reads as obvious satire, but there’s also a “black shirt” faction whose name doubles as a nod to Mussolini and to Thailand’s own red shirt-yellow shirt divide. A subplot about Lert cutting a deal with opposition politicians to revise the constitution has echoes of the (historically non-military-aligned) Pheu Thai party’s real 2023 pact with ex-military parties, struck at the expense of the progressive Move Forward Party that had actually won the most seats in that year’s Thai parliamentary elections.
Interestingly, 4 Tigers received support from Thailand’s own Ministry of Culture for its screening at the 2026 New York Asian Film Festival. This is all the more remarkable given February 2026’s Thai general election brought a more nationalistic, military-aligned government to power; one hopes that someone more intimately familiar with Thailand’s cultural policy apparatus can shed additional light on this matter. Of course, there are some lines that 4 Tigers does not cross. Thailand’s monarchy goes entirely unmentioned in the movie—unsurprising given the severe penalties that the country’s lèse-majesté laws impose on royal criticism.
All in all, 4 Tigers is worth seeking out if you want well-executed action, novel folklore-inflected worldbuilding, and jabs at Thailand’s authoritarian sociopolitical scene. You’ll just have to tolerate some narrative drag and occult confusion along the way.
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4 Tigers (Thai: เสือ) — Thailand. Dialog in Thai. Directed by Kongkiat Komesiri. Running time 2hr 18min. First released October 23, 2025. Starring Sukollawat Kanaros, Mario Maurer, Arak Amornsupasiri, Phakin Khamwilaisak, Mashannoad Suvalmas.
This article is part of Cinema Escapist‘s dedicated coverage of the 2026 New York Asian Film Festival. 4 Tigers screens July 14 at the Walter Reade Theater with a Q&A featuring star Mario Maurer.