Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior

A movie with the thinnest of plotlines, only made to help bring a village peasant trained in the art of Muay Thai into a big town to show what real warriors are made of. This is far from a new concept, so all that one should look for in a movie like this is how good the fight scenes are. This movie blows most competition right out of the water!
What I found the most fun about watching Ong-Bak is the Muay Thai fighting style onscreen. It's a lot different from any style of kung fu, and the new look and use of body parts is a fresh way of watching action for a change. Many are hailing Tony Jaa as the next Bruce Lee after only this film alone. I don't know about that! How many times have people previously been marked with this moniker? Not many, and he is definitely Thailand's answer to what Bruce Lee accomplished, which is bringing a cinematic notoriety to his homeland's style of martial arts for a wider audience. Way to go, Jaa! Yeah!
Ting doesn't ask for trouble, of course. Trouble comes looking for him. It takes a lot to get Ting pissed off. The best way to make him beat the living shit out of you is if you start smacking a girl around. Ting doesn't like that. Go ahead and taunt him, say whatever horrible things about him you like. Offer him money, or threaten his life and he won't do nothing to you. Once you realize this, feel free to grab the nearest girl and smack her. Just once. But don't say I didn't warn you!
For the first half hour we don't see much action. Instead, there's the effort to bring about a story of two con artists, a young woman and an older man who are far in debt and doing small jobs to scrape for loose change. Ting knows "Dirty Balls" as Hum Lae, a guy who left the same village as Ting to live the city life. Hum Lae realizes Ting's skills and tries to exploit him for money, which leads to a whole heap of trouble. We shouldn't mind because thanks to Hum Lae, Ting has to go on a take-no-prisoners ass-kick Muay Thai rampage!
There is a lot of kicking and punching in the face, and it looks like it HURTS, but they just keep on fighting! There's some subtle wirework which sometimes shows itself to the slightly extreme amount and the occasional clever use of reverse photography to do some really funky tricks. Tony Jaa's athletic ability is matched by China's best in their primes, such as Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Samo Hung, Tony Leung and the like. There's a long chase sequence where he outruns and steps OVER large groups of pursuers. He jumps over moving cars, flips through small spaces and even slides under a car doing the full splits! Some of this stuff is pretty freaky stunt work, but it's definitely impressive!

The last half deals with Ting cleaning out an entire string of badstreet brawlers in a bar, all the while seeking out the beloved Ong-Bak statue head.
Like I said, the Muay Thai is the main attraction here, performed beautifully by Tony Jaa. He triple spins an elbow into peoples' heads, makes double spinning roundhouse kicks with full 720's on one foot into a guy's face. He knees people, blocks in typical Muay Thai style, props his leg for blocking low kicks, has one opponent throw tables, chairs and a FRIDGE at him, gets into a quick-footed kicking duel with another fast-footed featherweight... most of this stuff has got to be seen to be appreciated. Fun times for fans of martial arts movies, that's what matters most!

Don't miss this one if you're into fast action martial arts movies that don't have much of a storyline. In the case of Ong-Bak, the acting is better than most movies of this style, and there are plenty of fresh new takes on oldschool fighting style action. Sometimes the slapstick is a little too silly for my tastes, and a couple of times there are moments of unkindly brutality that doesn't fit with the rest of this movie's jive; especially a heartless forced overdose drug scene. That was a little more than I expected from what the rest of this movie was offering the audience. It wasn't so bad that I couldn't watch it, though.
Ong-Bak is coming to America in a limited theatrical release on 11 February 2005. I say go see it if it sounds like your bag of chips, you won't be disappointed. If it's not going to play near you, don't worry. Surely the DVD will be out here in America within 4 months of its' theatrical release. Unless Hollywood buys the rights for this movie's remake. Please God, no!

GRADE: B