The Protector - Don’t Pick On My Elephant

Feb

7

The Protector - Don’t Pick On My Elephant

≡ 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: 2005

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

When I first watched The Protector AKA Tom Yum Goong in the theater, I was irritated, in spite of the awesome martial arts sequences. It was obvious that Miramax had cut the living crap out of the movie. It barely made any sense. As a result, most movie reviewers routinely made fun of the “He picked on my elephant!” story line.

Ever since, I’ve been looking forward to seeing the uncut version to see if those problems were addressed. Well, yes and no.

The first twenty minutes of Tom Yum Goong are nearly flawless. By cutting them, Miramax ripped the heart and soul out of the movie. I’ve got to hand it to director Prachya Pinkaew. He manages something very difficult, which is to communicate the spiritual essence of a people. He shows in these twenty minutes that the Thai people are peace loving, in tune with nature, and respect life in all of it’s forms. They show how elephants are integral to a traditional lifestyle, and how they are regarded as family. With this information, it makes sense that our hero, Kham (Tony Jaa), would journey to Australia to look for his lost elephant, so the events of the story have some emotional resonance. It would be like one of us going to another country if our baby brother had been kidnapped.

Let me back up a little. Kham’s elephant and it’s son are kidnapped by a gang which deals in endangered species, so Kham goes looking for his elephants, kicking anyone’s ass who gets in the way.

So far, so good, but the problems with the film start once Kham gets to Australia. For one thing, the script by Napalee and Piyaros Thongdee spends too much time on the various activities of the gang, such as dealing drugs and prostitution. This is old hat. What’s really interesting about The Protector is the endangered species angle.

Then there’s the character of Mark (Petchtai Wongkamlao), an Australian cop. The character is obnoxious, and the actor playing him is just awful, just as he was when he was playing a similar character in Ong Bak. The character is also not necessary to tell the story. Pla (Bongkoj Khongmalai) is similarly extraneous.

Much of the English dialog is unspeakably bad, at least what you can understand. The Thai and Australian accents are often so thick, you can’t make out what’s being said.

It’s too bad. The screenwriters have come up with a wonderful central villain, Madame Rose (Xing Jing). She is ice cold and a complete witch. I loved the scene in which she secures her right to take over the business her grandfather started.

Her henchman, Johnny (Johnny Nguyen), is also wonderful. He’s snotty and sure of himself, and he moves like a panther when he fights.

You also can’t argue much with the action choreography by Panna Rittikrai and Tony Jaa. The moves are all but superhuman and incredibly graceful, and there’s lots of variety to the strikes. Rittikrai has also assembled many gifted martial artists from many different styles to serve as opponents for Jaa. Chinese, Brazilian and American styles are represented. Much of the action is quite brutal. Lots of breakaway furniture is destroyed, glass is shattered, people are thrown through doors, crates, windows, etc. There’s one awesome seemingly single take in which Jaa lays waste to dozens of opponents while working his way up many floors in a building.

Unfortunately, the narrative portions of the film after the initial scenes in Thailand have problems. Besides the poor and diffuse scriptwriting, director Prachya Pinkaew so overuses wide angle lenses that it becomes a distraction.

It’s a pity. With a good script editor, The Protector could have been a much better movie. The direction problems would have been harder to solve. I wouldn’t want to lose the poetic and moving images in the beginning of the movie, which we can credit to Prachya Pinkaew, but the intended comedy in the Australian sequences is atrocious, and much of the direction of the narrative scenes in Australia is awkward.

The end result is an extremely flawed movie from a dramatic standpoint, but one with breathtaking action sequences. For Trash Cinema fans, it really is a must see, but I can’t give it an Essential rating because it doesn’t fully succeed as a film.