The Protector

After having watched Tony Jaa in Ong Bak about a week ago on TV, I was waiting for the day when Tom-Yum-Goog finally made its way here. There was a film in between these two, called The Bodyguard, which wasn't released in the theatres here, so I guess I gotta hit the shops to look for it.

My friend has likened the introduction of Tom-Yum-Goong to watching National Geographic, and he's right. It's an idyllic Thai village scene where Kham (Tony Jaa) grows up and bonds together with herds of elephants, and it might even looked as if it came right out of Kipling's The Jungle Book.

It's a picture of calm before the storm, and the first 10 minutes set the scene, as the elephants will play an important aspect in this movie as it gets elevated into mythical status (check out the CGI scene, looks like Jackie Chan's The Myth, with its historical fights). You'll know right away that this is a Thai movie, with its excellent fusion of Thai elements into the storyline - the elephants, the rivers, the rituals, Buddhism, "Tom-Yum-Goong", and of course, Muay Thai.

With elephants, the natural baddies are first and foremost, the poachers, who kidnap our hero's pets (wrong move). Of course these baddies belong to a larger crime family and syndicate operating out of Sydney, Australia, which deals with drugs, human and animal trafficking, prostitution, all with the blessings of corrupt cops, and led by a transvestite (yes, you heard me right).

Tom-Yum-Goong may refer to a shrimp dish in Thailand, but in this movie, it refers to a restaurant which serves as a front for illegal activities. Action fans need not wait too long for Tony Jaa action, as he plunges head on into fights with the Thai gangsters first, in their bungalow hideout. And that's just to whet your appetite for more mayhem! Bridging the fights from Thailand to Australia is a short boat chase scene that looked right out from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but that's the only weak action sequence in Tom-Yum-Goong.

There are plenty of fights in Sydney to keep all action fans happy - like the massive battle with the Aussie streetgangs (on roller blades and bikes) in an abandoned warehouse, which also showcased Jaa's agility and acrobatic ability. I thought that somehow the cinematography during this sequence let Jaa down at times, especially when he weaved in and out of the trains, the camera just couldn't keep up, and was positioned at a bad angle.

But that aside, it made up for itself in a beautifully filmed, one-motion tracking shot of Jaa making his way through a four-storey restaurant, kicking major rear, without seemingly any cuts (I said seemingly, as there was a part where water droplets stained the camera, but somehow disappeared abruptly). Doom has its gimmicky first-person shooter perspective, this one here has its classic third-person perspective, as if you're controlling Jaa in a coin-operated fight console, taking on the baddies with various swift moves.

If you've known by now, I kinda likened Jaa's movies so far to Bruce Lee's (some see shades of Matrix in this movie), and there was another action sequence in which Jaa was up against hordes of gangsters in an enclosed room (think Lee in the Japanese dojo in Fists of Fury), and he floored them all with bone-crushing, limb-breaking kicks and punches. Move aside Steven Seagal, Jaa's doing it faster, and more lethal! The fights with the huge wrestlers too was a highlight (ala Lee in Game of Death with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), as was the final fight with the final "boss".

Perhaps my favourite in the movie is the scene at the temple. Water, Fire, and a looming Buddha, Jaa takes on three distinct exponents one-on-one - the hip hop breakdancer, the Chinese wushu sword expert, and the Western wrestler. While this movie has done away with Ong-Bak's repetitive sequences (yes, we know what Jaa is capable of already), the slow-mo in this particular set is pure poetry in motion. It's different from Ong-Bak, in that Jaa, like Lee in Enter The Dragon, gets beaten up and injured. You can inflict pain and injure Jaa, but like Lee, he bounces back with a vengeance, sans shirt too.

Jaa has let his action do the talking instead of his acting abilities (no stunt double, no wire-work, no special effects), and I have no qualms with that, given after all, this is an out and out action movie. Petchtai Wongkamlao, who plays Inspector Mark, and has been featured in all of Jaa's movies, returns to add his comedic touch to the film as a Thai-immigrant policeman in Sydney, and fans of Ong Bak will also be pleased that this movie is helmed by the same director Prachya Pinkaew.

While Hollywood struggles to find worthy successors to its 80s and 90s action heroes like Stallone, Van Damme, and Schwarzeneggar, Asia has already found one to takeover the mantle from Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li (as the latter two seemed to have drifted and indicated a preference for dramas). He's Thai, and his name is Tony Jaa. You heard it here first, he's gonna be setting the bar for action movies to come. He can only get better, and I'm already a huge fan!

There are parts of Tom Yum Goong (or, as we like to call it, WHERE'S MY ELEPHANT) that amateurish and distracting; especially in some of the camera work and editing. However, those are but minor nit picks in a movie that has some of the best fight sequences I've seen. One, in particular, stands out as it involves a continuous tracking shot of a huge mêlée involving a 4 or 5 story building and a long staircase that winds up all the floors. The entire sequence is one shot, with no cuts or edits. It's worth watching the movie through again just for that sequence.

The story is pretty basic, but really, what at we going to see? This is no Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but it doesn't aim to be. The story is adequate to get you from one sequence to the next.

Tony Jaa is outstanding. His skills in the fight scenes are particularly astonishing given the overall lack of editing in these sequences. He's obviously doing all these things himself, and mostly in real time.

One minor note that I found amusing, though it might only be funny to fans of the movie BABE, the name of the production company is "Baa-Ram-Ewe"

In Bangkok, the young Kham (Tony Jaa) was raised by his father in the jungle with elephants as members of their family. When his old elephant and the baby Kern are stolen by criminals, Kham finds that the animals were sent to Sidney. He travels to Australia, where he locates the baby elephant in a restaurant owned by the evil Madame Rose (Xing Jing), the leader of an international Thai mafia. With the support of the efficient Thai sergeant Mark (Petchtai Wongkamlao), who was involved in a conspiracy, Kham fights to rescue the animal from the mobsters.

"Tom Yum Goong" has a silly, flawed and absurd story, where gangsters do not use guns, but sticks, clubs, rollers, bicycles, motorcycles or whips. Further, they just fight in sequence against the hero, one by one, to have their arms and legs broken. The criminal Johnny simply vanishes without any further explanation. However, the choreography of the fights is amazing and very realistic, making this movie a worthwhile entertainment. Tony Jaa is probably the successor of Jackie Chan and Jet Li, and I believe this movie could be less "serious" and have more humor like in Jackie Chan's films. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Protetor" ("The Protector")

The makers of 2003's Ong-Bak are back with bang, a crash, a couple of elephants and many, many cracks. In fact, every other word spoken appears to be "Argh!". Muay Thay expert-extraordinaire Tony Jaa returns to lead us once again, as his sacred elephants are poached from Thailand and sent to, of all places, Australia. As our hero Kham, he must travel there himself to basically kick the living snot out of anyone who steps in his way. And that's about it.

The maker of this film, Prachya Pinkaew, is either a really shoddy storyteller, or has clocked on to the fact that no one goes to see martial arts films for the plot. Warrior King has an almost identical structure to his first film Ong Bak: a good 25 minutes or so of religious Thai imagery, villagers roaming around with animals before someone comes along and messes everything up. Petchtai Wongkamlao essentially reprises the comedy role he played in the previous release, although this time he hogs all the comic moments, as the wafer-thin script offers little in compensation for its action scenes. All the English-spoken acting is terrible. With that said I'm assuming most of the foreign language acting is terrible too, but for obvious reasons the Australian acting stood out more. The script is full of age old Hollywood clichés such as cops being taken off the case, only to go vigilante, gold-hearted prostitutes and a whole host of colourful looking gangsters (former WWE reject Nathan Jones makes a hilarious cameo) that wouldn't look out of place in a straight-to-video Steven Seagal flick.

And yet despite the glaring faults with a film as silly as this, none of the criticisms truly matter for one simple reason: Tony Jaa is absolutely amazing. Watching our protagonist fly kick the hell out of everyone before performing all sorts of acrobatic stunts will have your jaw on the floor. The man can obviously smash through thin plot points as fast as he can human bones. The film isn't badly shot either. Apart from getting a nice sense of Thai culture and a splendid view of Sidney, Warrior King is expertly choreographed. There is one remarkable sequence in which our protagonist battles his way through four stories of the same building absolutely smashing the hell out of anything thing that moves, which seems to go on forever, taken all in one single steady-cam shot. It would make David Lean jealous.

Granted if you've seen Ong Bak watching Muay Thay for a second time won't have the same head-crushing impact. Whilst Warrior King boasts plenty of superbly choreographed action sequences, it doesn't peak as well as the much more pure Ong Bak managed to. The movie does, however, generate a sense of darkness amidst the stalking threat of campy buffoonery. So it's an impressive sophomore effort, obviously catering more towards an ever increasingly cognizant western audience.

Ong Bak was a fantastic achievement by the young Thai fighter America has come to embrace as Tony Jaa. Fantastic stunts, amazing fight choreography, and an overwhelming sense of brutal martial arts action that has been missing in fight films since Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx. However, the overall success of Ong Bak was diminished by the lack of intriguing characters and a fluid story that actually made some sense. Tom Yum Goong starts off on the same foot, but then takes the viewer in an entirely different direction…an example of one of the most explosive and entertaining martial arts movies of ALL TIME.

To go into intricate detail about the plot outlines of TYG will do you no good, it will not make you want to see this movie. What makes me so passionate about Tony Jaa and his visual appeal is his overall dynamic nature in the fight scenes. As told in the plot outline, his elephants get stolen, and he must fight to get them back…and fighting is what he does like no one else I have ever seen. It doesn't matter how many opponents appear before Tony, he takes them all in stride, and excels in dramatic fashion, either by his flying acrobatic kicks or his powerful breathtaking punches. But what truly makes this film unique is Tony's ability to embrace a new type of Muay Thai made especially for the movie: Muay Kotchasan.

Although this may not make much sense to you or interest you, trust me, when you view this film and see Muay Kotchasan put into action, you will witness something never before seen on film. Tony's moves are so brutal at times, you can't help but grimace and wonder how the stunt men could take such punishment. He breaks elbows, rips quadriceps, destroys ligaments, cracks vertebra…I could go on, but the movie pretty much speaks for itself. But, if I had to choose the most exciting part of TYG, it has to be Tony's second bout with Nathan Jones. Learning from his mistakes in the first fight, Tony's adapts his fighting style to his smaller frame, and uses Nathan's size against him in a chilling display of David vs. Goliath…it is quite a sight to behold.

Overall, Tom Yum Goong is an awesome spectacle of Tony Jaa's fighting ability, and if you truly enjoyed Ong Bak, then be ready to be blown away by something far better.