"Tears of the Black Tiger" is apparently a post-modern homage / parody to 1960s Thai westerns. I generally hate this kind of ironic parody film making, but I definitely enjoyed this film. It may be because I had no idea that Thailand made western films in the 1960s, let alone seen any of them, that this film proved rather effective. It isn't perfect, but its such a colorful, entertaining, and above all unique and strange film that its difficult to dislike.<br /><br />Part of the reason why it works so well is that the storyline and characters are reasonably involving. Its not extremely well developed, but has a sense of romanticism which, like Douglas Sirk at his best, is involving despite being campy. The film is pure style over substance, but the style is so engaging I really didn't mind too much. The acting is pretty good as well, despite the fact that the characters don't carry a whole lot of weight.<br /><br />This brings me to the one thing that prevented me from loving the film. Mentioned earlier, this is a post-modern parody. The set designs were so colorful and dreamlike, plus the story was actually involving, the constant bits of ironic humor really got on my nerves. I really wish the filmmakers had been more sincere with the material, because the winking at the camera prevents one from being truly lost in the dreamlike style. I may be missing the point completely here (again, I am not familiar at all with the movies this pays tribute to, so I'm not sure if the originals were the same way). However, the movie is very enjoyable and certainly different that I found it worthwhile, despite not being as great as it could've been. (7/10)