It's all in the execution.

When carrying out a hit, assassin Joe always makes use of the knowledge of the local population. On arriving in Bangkok, Joe meets street kid Kong and he becomes his primary aide. But when Kong is nearly killed, he asks Joe to train him up in the deadly arts and unwittingly becomes a target of a band of killers.
Bangkok Dangerous keeps every mind human — it fights its subject at zero distance. The story fights on E8/E11 of the E0–E14 reality ladder.
Films fighting at the same level of reality, about the same things.
The same preoccupations examined at another scale — one mind versus a nation.