This is a “kung fu” movie that takes place in Thailand. It starts out in a small village, then moves to Bangkok, oriental city. It’s not your modern “wire-fu” at all.
The star of the movie practices a form of martial arts called “Muay Thai” from what I understand. Interestingly, in this weeks New Yorker there’s a piece about Muay Thai, but I haven’t read it yet.
The star, Tony Jaa, is a pretty remarkable physical actor. There’s a chase scene through the streets where the director basically places every obstacle he can think of in front of the running Jaa for him to jump through, jump over, slide under, and move around. It’s pretty cool. And the director will show the same stunt from 3 different angles, sometimes, and slow it down.
Great movie making? Probably not. But if you want to gawk at a guy doing pretty awesome stuff, it works.
The fight scenes start to resemble each other after a while, but the style is interesting, lots of simultaneous elbow/knee blows. Lots of elbows period.
The opening scene of the movie involves about 20 guys fighting to get a flag out of the top of a big tree with tons of heavy branches. All I can say is that a LOT of guys are thrown to the ground in completely uncut shots, and the way that Jaa moves through the tree is pretty remarkable.
The story isn’t as heavy as something modern like Hero or Crouching Tiger but it’s in line with the plots of classic kung fu movies.
Ong Bak. If you’re interested in kung fu movies. . .checks it, cousin.
I’ll second the recommendation for Ong bak. Doesn’t have a gripping story as such, but some of the moves made me laugh out loud. The very first thing you see him do. I rewound twice and chuckled.
Going to have to go and buy it now
Yeah, the promos for it here made a big deal about “No stunt doubles, no CG, no wires!”
My favorite gag was during the market chase: Sidekick is getting chased by ten bad guys when he grabs a meat cleaver from a butcher’s table and turns to face them. The bad guys stop, waiting for someone to be the first to attack him. As they face off, an old woman slowly trudges between them with a huge basket over her shoulder and chants “knives for sale!” Sidekick and bad guys all look at her, then look back up at each other.
Cut to: sidekick again running for his life from the bad guys, who are now all armed with meat cleavers.
Off-topic, but I just happened to see Kung Fu Hustle tonight. It was much more violent than Chow’s last movie, Shaolin Soccer. Kind of like the most cartoonishly violent of the old Warner Bros. or Tom & Jerry’s, but with blood spraying, bones breaking and lots of people dying.
Ong-Bak was so much fun! That first chase scene, through the marketplace, was just genius. It reminded me of how much fun it is to watch Jackie Chan sometimes. Unfortunately, the movie went on to have at least one too many chase scenes. But I really did enjoy it tremendously, despite that.
I enjoyed parts of Ong-Bak, and the star’s athleticism was jaw-dropping to watch.
But I felt like the movie was intentionally designed to crush the empathy out of me. Leaving the theater, I felt like I had been beaten within an inch of my life.
All the brutality, the bone-crunching moments…the throbbing asian hip-hop soundtrack.
I saw Ong Bak at a festival before its US release and loved it. It’s an exponentially better viewing experience with a large crowd watching it and reacting all together.
I really need to rent this. I love martial arts movies, and I’m not familiar with this fighting style at all. I’ve never heard a bad thing about the movie!
Another vote for “Ong Bak”. But be sure to rent the newer American release. I saw this in the theatre and then bought a DVD off ebay. The girl’s (real) voice is excruciating ! They could easily extract information from Al-Qaeda suspects by merely having her recite to them ! So the key to enjoying this movie is to be able to listen to a DUBBED version - WAY better.
Also, after the “capture the flag” opening, there is about 20 minutes of plot development. So just bear with it - it will be worth it.
This movie really raised the bar for me as far as martial arts movies. I saw Jet Li’s “Unleashed” shortly after seeing “Ong Bak”, and I remember feeling disappointed that as good as Jet is, he didn’t do stuff to the level of Jaa. A truly amazing performer.
I saw Ong Bak when I was in Thailand in June. Loved it more than I love other kung fu movies, which is “marginally”. But seriously, and sorry if I contribute to the debate, screw the dubbed version. Go for subtitles.
(Incidentally, I was in Thailand a couple of days ago and saw a new movie called ‘Tom Yum’ - slogan: “The second highest budget movie ever made in Thailand”. Hell of a selling point.)
I know whereof I speak. I’ve seen countless horribly dubbed Hong Kong Kung-fu movies (like the Texan they chose for Bruce Lee’s voice in “Chinese Connection”), and have “read” many japanese samurai movies (subtitled).
The girl’s voice is torture. Everyone else in the movie would be okay to listen to, but the girl’s voice is too much to take. For “Ong Bak”, dubbed is the way to go.
For me, I was love the chases through market. Very normal and cool. Also with the three wheeler. Very fast and special, but with no special! Very special. Ong-bak is number one movie in 2005.
