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Chow's irreverent knack of physical comedy, enhanced by computer gimmickry, is exploited to the hilt when a sextet of struggling Shaolin disciples decide to form a martially superhuman football team to spread the good word of kung fu to the masses. Chow, never a great purveyor of subtlety (the bad guys are called Team Evil), plays their captain, and he can kick a ball so hard it bends the goalposts. One player, 'Iron Head', can balance vertically on a football with his eyes closed. The ground shakes, the goal nets perish, and players are hurtled through space. It's a real feast for the eyes, even if it has very little to do with either Shaolin or soccer. That's probably for the best, as the mass-appealing qualities of this exuberant product have assured the film's success far beyond the boundaries of Chow's other, more native, comedic efforts. Those uninitiated into the madcap world of Stephen Chow could do no better than to start here, you'll find it a wondrous treat like no other. (Note: hunt down the uncut Chinese release if you can, Miramax's turgid dubbed version is vastly inadequate).

We're introduced to the Axe Gang, a mass army of suited henchmen who command sway over the hotspots of 1920s China, with a brutal slaying worthy of Scorsese. They summarily break off into a choreographed dance routine over the opening credits, and it's clear that we're back in Stephen Chow's world. In the provincial towns, a burly landlady screams at her tenants with such force the ground shudders and the windows smash. An Axe Gang leader is given a bad hairstyle by one of the town's folk, and soon the whole village is under attack. Sing (Chow) wants to be an Axe because 'being a bad guy is cool'; he helps the protagonists get the 'Beast' out of a mental asylum so he can defeat the screaming landlady and her dithering spouse in kung fu combat. Chow's inspiration is as much Western as it is Eastern, with obligatory Bruce Lee parodies in tow alongside brilliant takes on Gangs of New York and The Matrix. The madcap surrealism of Shaolin Soccer is at the film's heart, but the greater scale of this production (partly financed by American money) dictates a much more polished, accomplished piece: Chow's maturity as a director has blossomed, the sets/costumes/characters are vividly imaginative, while the pace of the humour is expertly complimented by a much more sinister, darker overtone, something Chow seems to have embraced full heartedly. While Chow the comedian has never looked better; with a heavy endorsement of CGI responsible for the more irreverent comedy, Chow's performance sees him fine-tune his Chaplinesque timing, cuddly dexterity and Bruce Lee intensity to absolute perfection, underlining the fact that if Hong Kong comedy has any future at all, its firmly up to the fate of Stephen Chow. This is a delightful kung fu romp. If you don't find something to love about this movie then you should check if you're still breathing.

The most exciting Asian success of recent times is, surprisingly, of Thai origin – not the film as such (it's a pottering drivel of a story line) but rather the movie's star, Panom Yeerum, or 'Tony Ja' to us Westerners. Perhaps one of the most remarkable finds in the evolution of martial arts cinema, Ja resembles a spirited Jackie Chan in his stunt work, only with enough ferocity to make Steven Seagal look like a prancing mary. Ong-Bak is all about full contact Muay Thai kickboxing, and Tony Ja is so remarkable to watch, he will quite literally leave you breathless: a chase scene through Thailand's market streets has the boy scaling walls in a single leap, glide underneath moving trucks while in the splits, and somersault his way through bustling traffic with split-second execution. You think that's something, wait until he starts beating people up, with enough force to bring down a Jumbo Jet – his knees and elbows can split through cycle helmets, he performs wildly acrobatic kicks that defy gravity, even when his legs are on fire! The final brawl sees a succession of stuntmen line up as canon fodder for his exhilarating skills, which emphasises the movie's selling point to such a degree that it literally beats any kind of wistful cynicism clean out of your brain. The movie's secret, and Tony Ja's, is the impressive lack of wire gimmickry, stunt doubles or computer generated nonsense, a rare thing in this new age of the instant kung fu hero. Ong-Bak reverses the genre back to its bare essentials and emphatically embraces talent over trickery. What Ja also makes us neglect is a pitiful story line, another herald to the golden age, where he travels into the dark, gambling infested underworld of Thailand to recover the stolen head of his village's sacred Buddhist statue, but in a movie this explicitly crowd pleasing trivial issues like plot and characterisation are by the by. This movie kicks ass and should come with a packet of plasters – as for Tong Ja, with a debut this strong, it will remain to be seen how long he can resist the call from Planet Weinstein.