Butterfly Man

Danny Boyle may have come a cropper with The Beach, but that hasn't deterred Bangkok-based British expat Kaprice Kea from attempting another Thai-based 'trouble in paradise' tale for this tyro effort. English backpacker Adam (Laing) finds himself falling hard for Thai masseuse Em after being dumped by his girlfriend, but he is quickly branded a feckless 'butterfly man' when he succumbs to the lure of easy sex elsewhere. The real soul-searching kicks in, however, when he finds himself embroiled in a human trafficking operation. Suddenly the culture of exploitation casts its nets much more widely than he thought. Adam's real problem though is to be stranded in the turgid depths of an issue-driven melodrama, which railroads character and plot in favour of crude sermonising on the vulnerability of rural Thai women and the erosion of traditional cultures.