Once Upon a Time…This Morning

Ex-critic and screenwriter Bhandit Rittakol updates a Thai fairy tale about a family in peril into the terms of a mid-1990s thriller. Mum and Dad are divorced and the three kids (much to their disgust) live with Mum in her new Bangkok apartment. After one of their frequent rows with Mum, the kids run away to look for Dad - unaware that the baby's cot contains a bag of pure heroin hidden there by a kid courier on the run. Cue an extended chase in which the fast-learning kids are pursued by both their distraught parents, the police and the drug lords and their hired street kids. A lot happens on the way to the admirably unsentimental climax, much of it genuinely gripping.