For a trigger-happy bank robber, convincing the public and cops that your exploits are “magical,” that you have supernatural protections, would seem like the ultimate edge. Convince law enforcement that bullets pass right through you, that arresting and handcuffing is futile, and they might leave you to your work.

But when that work is blood-stained armed robberies of jewelry stores, armored trucks and even buses and the “collateral damage” body count piles up, even the most cowwardly or corrupt cops know they have to do something.

Tee Yai was a real robber of the post-Vietnam War Thailand of the ‘late 70s. This web link to a place that sells magical amulets of the type he wore link is the best I could find as far as a “biography” of the guy –– of Chinese descent, favored 11mm Colt semi-automatics, mop toppsed and kind of dashing in his wanted posters.

After seeing the latest Thai thriller aiming to tell his story, “Yee Tai: Born to be Bad,” he remains just as much of a mystery. Yee Tai is not exactly the central figure in his own story.

Director Nonzee Nimibutr and screenwriter Chanchana Homsap serve up a bullet-riddled Butch and Sundance story that, thanks to the facts, breaks the formula of most Thai action pictures of recent decades. It’s not about martial arts. Gangsters and cops here drive ’70s vintage Datsuns and the like and shoot it out in a series of stand-offs and hold-ups.

The bursts of grenades and gunplay are pretty much all that recommends this one, which features a lifelong partner Rerk (Wisarut Himmarat) as “Butch” to Nattawin Wattanagitphat‘s Tee Yai/”Sundance.” We get hints that our title charcter is a violent hothead who treats life cheaply, when he isn’t chanting incantations to fend off his pursuers, and only the barest suggestion of how he got that way.

Yes, there’s an abused sex worker, Dao (Supassra Thanachat) whom Rerk, Tee Yai’s accomplice since childhood is sweet on. She’s a pawn who must be fought over, with one brutally dirty cop acting as muscle for her madam. Of course there’s a giant Cadillac hauling around a top level government minister who is forever shouting at and urging on his outgunned cops. Tee Yai, Rerk and accomplices Joon and Kid fire semi-automatics and war surplus M-16s, the cops use revolvers and shotguns. The car chases, involving Datsuns, ancient Toyotas, etc. are nothing to write home about.

The story of robberies, betrayals and the monk/guru the bandits consult because he “taught us everything we know” (About robbing? Killing? Supernatural huxterism?) has possibilities, mainly in the amusing superstition which the police share with the general public.

“You guys think he has magic powers, don’t you?” one frustrated chief inspector gripes (in Thai or dubbed into English).

When the crook you’re pursuing seems unkillable, when he says a few words, blows in a cop’s face and puts the officer to sleep, you can see how Thai Barney Fifes might believe his “legend.”

The predatory robber/killer’s biography is limited to a few flashbacks of how Tee Yai’s con man/snake oil salesman father might have set him on this amoral path and how he and Rerk teamed up and met the monk Luang Po.

But there’s no depth to the characters, especially Tee Yai, little that tells us how or what each is thinking or hoping. The shootouts are routine if excessive and the finale inevitable.

As “Born to be Bad” legends go, ” this Tee Yai tale is strictly weak tea.

Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, prostitution, profanity

Cast: Wisarut Himmarat, Apo Nattawin Wattanagitiphat and Supassra Thanachat

Credits: Directed by Nonzee Nimibutr, scripted by Chanchana Homsap. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:58