Tony Jaa put a brick in everybody’s shorts when he punched, kicked and leapt his way into their hearts with Ong Bak: the Thai Warrior. The man introduced himself to the mainstream movie-going world as a Muay Thai maestro and a juggernaut of ass kicking who could not only beat the snot out of people and make it look good, but does all of his own stunts with no strings attached (literally) ala the mighty masters like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. His follow up to Ong Bak was The Protector, whose American release was “produced” by Quentin Tarantino… on whom I’m considering placing all the blame for its crappiness.
Jaa plays Kham; a young man who’s been trained by his father since his youth in the family tradition of the care and breeding of elephants for the king of Thailand. Yeah, I didn’t know Thailand still had a king either, but our ignorance has no bearing on the movie. Anyway, after spending his entire youth helping his father raise pachyderms and learning Muay Thai (the ancient art of smack down passed on from elephant keeper to elephant keeper), Kham‘s life is turned upside down one day, as lives are oft to do in these types of movies. When pops takes his elephant to be considered for duty by the king’s personal elephant inspectors, it turns out these so called “inspectors” are actually working for a Thai crime family/corporation working out of Sidney Australia! Dramatic Reverb! When daddy-o spells something fishy and tries to take back his elephant, the thugs shoot him dead and make off not only with his beloved gray juggernaut of superb memory, but also the elephant’s son, to whom Kham has long been attached. After kicking some info out of a few bad guy asses he surprises at a party (how he figured out where to find these guys and how they’re connected to the death of his father and the theft of his elephant we’ll never know), our hero hops the next jet to Sydney. While there he teams up with a Thai cop whose corrupt police department tries to frame him for murdering a prominent political figure (as all good cops are oft to be in these types of movies) and a random Thai girl who is somehow connected to the crime family/corporation and spends the rest of movie beating people up through badly edited fight sequences, nonsensical dialogue and a flaming Buddhist temple… which, despite being “engulfed in flames” seems to be entirely fireproofed with the exception of a couple of slow burning window sills…
I’d like to think that this movie’s faults come entirely from this being the American version and not because it original version sucked just as badly. Seeing as how I haven’t seen the original yet, I can’t say, but the version I did see suffered from bad editing, generic characters, horrible dialogue and a completely nonsensical clusterfuck of dubbing and subtitles! One or the other people, pick one! The fight scenes were the only reason to watch, and even then I wasn’t as amazed as I thought I’d be. Jaa is incredible, there’s no contesting that. The guy moves with the precision of Jackie Chan (who has a cameo when he bumps into Jaa at the Sydney airport) and the panther-like sleekness of Bruce Lee and he’s phenomenal to watch when he does his thing, but between less than dynamic camera work and the same old stupid “there’s 50 of us, but let’s all attack him one-at-a-time!” goon mentality, I wasn’t wetting myself here. Even when the camera was working and the fights were well rounded, other things bothered the shit out of me!
As Jaa is doing the throw down thing with Capoeira man (Lattef Crowder) and some guy with a sword, the temple in which they’re fighting burns around them, leaving an inch of water from the sprinklers and some great lighting effects in which they rumble. The problem with this scene is that the fire never spreads from where it starts, burning stationary and never giving the sense of imminent danger, but rather the sense that we’re just watching somebody else playing a really cheap video game where the background never changes! Speaking of video games, I hate watching other people play them, and though I can understand the effect that the director may have been going for as far as the long (and by that, I mean “loooooooooooooong”) scene in which Jaa fights his way up floor-by-floor through a five story restaurant/brothel, with absolutely no cuts and way too much “walking up stairs” footage it felt like I was watching somebody play their way through the world’s most lackluster “beat ‘em up” game for 15 minutes. This is supposed to be an action movie damn it, and you don’t get excitement and adrenaline by filling the gaps between your fights with drawn out periods of nothing! ARGH!
As far as the supporting cast goes, there might as well not have been one. The betrayed cop character Mark has little-to-no rapport with Kham whatsoever which is pointless considering he’s supposed to be the glorified sidekick here! I felt like these guys were leads from two different movies that happened to cross paths like some kind of perverted homage to the amalgamated cinematic ass findings of Thomas Tang. Even more useless was the female character (I think she’s a waitress or a hooker…) that befriends Kham, who only comes on screen long enough to meet him, give him a place to hang out at and get herself almost arrested by the corrupt cops for being associated with him. If she wanted to serve at least a sliver of purpose to the plot of the movie, there’s one simple thing she could have done: taken away the man‘s fucking scarf! Through the entire movie we see action news reports about the mayhem Kham‘s creating in Sydney and the best description given of the man is that he’s Thai and wears a red scarf! Take away the scarf and no one would know him from the hundreds/thousands of other Thai people living in Sydney! Common sense? Nope, sorry, you’ve got the wrong house, they’re two doors down.
Possibly the worst part of the movie has to have been the entirely unnecessary dream sequences in which Kham has badly computer generated visions of ancient Thai battlefields where more badly done video game hauntings happen. If you don’t have the money to do something right, don’t do it at all kids. All in all I can’t bring myself to tell anyone else to watch this movie. Even as a popcorn flick it feels too thrown together and uninspired to warrant a rental. You’re better off cruising You Tube or any of the hundreds of other imitation video clip websites on the internet today and just watching the fight scenes. Everything else here is a waste and should be disposed of. Somebody wake me when a Tony Jaa movie winds up in competent hands so I can have faith in the world again. Good night!
