Ong-Bak - Hope From Southeast Asia

Apr

16

Ong-Bak - Hope From Southeast Asia

≡ Category: Action, Highly Recommended, Martial Arts, Movie Reviews By Country, Thailand |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: Thailand
Genre: Action/Martial Arts
Director: Prachya Pinkaew
Year: 2003

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA HIGHLY RECOMMENDED MOVIE

By the early 2000s, the amazing martial arts action and stunt work of the Golden Age of Hong Kong (1985-1995) was only a memory. The Hong Kong film industry had gotten civilized. Movie producers no longer used up acres of glass every time they made an action movie. Jackie Chan was getting old, and mostly doing Hollywood films anyway. Jet Li was making flicks in America. Hong Kong stuntmen no longer wanted or were able to take the ridiculous falls or full contact hits they took routinely in the Golden Age. The horror of cheap CGI had overtaken Hong Kong action flicks.

Just as the art of making scrappy little action flicks with kickass martial arts and killer stunts seemed completely a thing of the past, director Prachya Pinkaew, martial arts choreographer Panna Rittikrai, and martial artist Tony Jaa emerged to give genre fans a scrap of hope.

That hope was Ong-Bak. The film is crammed with the sort of parkour-like stunts that Jackie Chan used to do all the time: running up walls, doing 1 1/2 twist somersaults, diving through bales of barbed wire, you know, fun stuff like that. Then there’s the fighting: Ong-Bak is a compendium of seemingly every possible permutation of Muay Thai — that is Thai kickboxing — stunningly performed by Tony Jaa and a cast of many masochistic stuntmen and martial artists, who take their lumps without complaint.

The opening scene of Ong-Bak gives some indication of what’s in store. Twenty or so men covered in dried white mud sprint towards a huge tree and start climbing it, kicking each other off as they go. Director Prachya Pinkaew lovingly films their falls without a cut as they hit branches on the way down and land hard on the ground below. It turns out that it’s a capture the flag contest, with the flag placed on top of the tree. The winner turns out to be our hero, Ting (Tony Jaa).

I should probably tell you something about the plot. A small-time hood named Don (Wannakit Sirioput) steals the head from a poor village’s statue of the buddha and brings it to the big city (I’m guessing Bangkok). Ting is entrusted with the safe return of the buddha’s head, and is given the address of Humlae (Petchtai Wongkamlao), a former resident of the village who moved to the city.

Humlae turns out to be a major dick, who promptly steals what little money Ting brought with him to bet it on underground Muay Thai fighting. Humlae lies, abuses whoever he’s with, and is basically a complete loser. So Ting not only has to retrieve the buddha head from the people who stole it, he has to deal with Humlae’s treachery as well.

You may think I’ve told you a lot about the plot, but I haven’t given away anything that isn’t obvious early on.

So, if I’ve praised the martial arts and stunts to the skies, how come Ong-Bak isn’t a Trash Cinema Essential? Well, there are some minor problems.

The character of Humlae is a little too convincing as a dick. When he has a crisis of conscience halfway through the picture, I didn’t buy it.

Then there’s the photography, which tends to be a problem with Thai films. It’s murky, mostly gray, dark green, and gold.

The other thing that bothered me a little was the tuk-tuk (three wheeled vehicle) chase about an hour into the movie. Director Prachya Pinkaew has obviously watched a lot of Hollywood car chases, and transfers bits from different movies into his. It’s not bad, but we’ve all seen it done before elsewhere, and better. It’s not actually painful to sit through, but it’s gratuitous and unnecessary for Western audiences, although Thais were probably thrilled to see a homegrown car chase.

Nonetheless, Ong-Bak is frequently thrilling, reminding me a little of the sense of discovery I felt when I first starting watching Hong Kong action movies.