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Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Final Verdict: [Meh...]
Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior
Martial Arts Action / Thai / 2003
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
For the Action Movie Countdown.
I've seen bits of Ong Bak 2 and know it contains elephants, but haven't seen Ong Bak 1, the movie that put Tony Jaa on the map.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
I've seen bits of Ong Bak 2 and know it contains elephants, but haven't seen Ong Bak 1, the movie that put Tony Jaa on the map.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
Lizard, anonymous Meat Slabs *sighs* it's less than usual at least.
In The Protector, the MacGuffin was Tony Jaa's elephant, and as much as I disliked that, I can't say a religious idol is much of an improvement.
Jaa plays Ting, who volunteers to track down the thief of his village's Buddha statue head and in the process runs into Jeeja's uncle from This Girl is Bad-Ass!!, Petchtai Wongkamlao, who this time is playing one of the most despicable protagonists I've ever seen.
All Ting wants is to find Don, the man who stole the statue, who Petchtai's character knows and at EVERY SINGLE OPPORTUNITY tries to extort Ting's fighting ability for the information.
The guy starts this relationship by inviting the guy into his house, stealing from him, and running away. DUDE, that's like the stupidest crime you could possibly commit, there's no need to tell him where you live, YOU BROUGHT HIM TO YOUR HOUSE, he could just wait there for you to come back to beat you up, if he wanted to.
Even after he finally does get Ting to fight and wins big on his abilities he goes back home and STILL totally ducks paying rent which Ting covers with a random ring he has. The manager doesn't even question how valuable the ring is, he just automatically accepts it as the equivalent of 3 months payment. How MUCH is 3 months rent around here? Is rent so little or are rings that expensive?
No less, Ting later brags that EVERYBODY knows Don, so what the ****? He's seriously the sort of ******** who'll charge a tourist for common knowledge, go **** YOURSELF, dude. I don't like this guy and his turn from baddie to goodie absolutely fails to salvage this repulsive personality.
I'm glad Ting doesn't buy into his irritatingly loud-mouthed selfish ******** most of the time, but he also doesn't seem to lend much weight to the completely thoughtless setup to his martial arts abilities.
"I see that I have trained you in the art of Muay Thai and your body is at peak physical perfection. Now I forbid you from using this valuable skill under any and all circumstances."
Brilliant.
Sure enough, Ting gets wrapped up in fights and even claims multiple times that he's willing to sacrifice his own life to recover Buddha's head. Meanwhile, the villain himself is pointing out that "it's just a rock".
Meanwhile meanwhile old women are grieving in a dirty old village somewhere in butt**** nowhere that their well has dried up and that only blessed Ting can save them by bringing back the object of their worship.
IT'S A ****ING ROCK, I'm not invested in this ****. You don't even have the Indiana Jones excuse where he just wants to preserve history and art and we don't even have the moment of clarity at the end where the giant Buddha statue looks down on a dying Ting and winks at him WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN GREAT.
No, it's just this superstitious ****.
Fortunately the fight sequences are pretty good with the occasional Crowing Moment of Awesome thrown in such as when Tony Jaa JUMPS OUT OF AN EXPLOSION TO DELIVER A SPINNING FIRE KICK TO THE FACE.
Scientific consensus is that this is cool.
In The Protector, the MacGuffin was Tony Jaa's elephant, and as much as I disliked that, I can't say a religious idol is much of an improvement.
Jaa plays Ting, who volunteers to track down the thief of his village's Buddha statue head and in the process runs into Jeeja's uncle from This Girl is Bad-Ass!!, Petchtai Wongkamlao, who this time is playing one of the most despicable protagonists I've ever seen.
All Ting wants is to find Don, the man who stole the statue, who Petchtai's character knows and at EVERY SINGLE OPPORTUNITY tries to extort Ting's fighting ability for the information.
The guy starts this relationship by inviting the guy into his house, stealing from him, and running away. DUDE, that's like the stupidest crime you could possibly commit, there's no need to tell him where you live, YOU BROUGHT HIM TO YOUR HOUSE, he could just wait there for you to come back to beat you up, if he wanted to.
Even after he finally does get Ting to fight and wins big on his abilities he goes back home and STILL totally ducks paying rent which Ting covers with a random ring he has. The manager doesn't even question how valuable the ring is, he just automatically accepts it as the equivalent of 3 months payment. How MUCH is 3 months rent around here? Is rent so little or are rings that expensive?
No less, Ting later brags that EVERYBODY knows Don, so what the ****? He's seriously the sort of ******** who'll charge a tourist for common knowledge, go **** YOURSELF, dude. I don't like this guy and his turn from baddie to goodie absolutely fails to salvage this repulsive personality.
I'm glad Ting doesn't buy into his irritatingly loud-mouthed selfish ******** most of the time, but he also doesn't seem to lend much weight to the completely thoughtless setup to his martial arts abilities.
"I see that I have trained you in the art of Muay Thai and your body is at peak physical perfection. Now I forbid you from using this valuable skill under any and all circumstances."
Brilliant.
Sure enough, Ting gets wrapped up in fights and even claims multiple times that he's willing to sacrifice his own life to recover Buddha's head. Meanwhile, the villain himself is pointing out that "it's just a rock".
Meanwhile meanwhile old women are grieving in a dirty old village somewhere in butt**** nowhere that their well has dried up and that only blessed Ting can save them by bringing back the object of their worship.
IT'S A ****ING ROCK, I'm not invested in this ****. You don't even have the Indiana Jones excuse where he just wants to preserve history and art and we don't even have the moment of clarity at the end where the giant Buddha statue looks down on a dying Ting and winks at him WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN GREAT.
No, it's just this superstitious ****.
Fortunately the fight sequences are pretty good with the occasional Crowing Moment of Awesome thrown in such as when Tony Jaa JUMPS OUT OF AN EXPLOSION TO DELIVER A SPINNING FIRE KICK TO THE FACE.
Scientific consensus is that this is cool.
The ending also has a couple "OH ****!" moments in it, particularly when Tony Jaa delivers what appears to be the epic final blow in a long-winded fight sequence only to turn around and IMMEDIATELY get shot in the chest. I laughed at that.
The worst action sequence by far is the taxi chase which has got to be the worst car chase I've ever seen in a movie.
They're not even cars, they're tiny canopied three-wheelers that goons just jump into and ride individually even though there's no good reason given why any of them jump into them and start driving en masse.
SURE ENOUGH, since they only have three wheels they almost instantly tip over and create a MASSIVE pileup, seriously there's a small army of goons driving these stupid things and the vast majority of them spin out and crash right away.
It's even more hilarious when THEY EXPLODE.
Unfortunately, the hilarity that comes with someone bringing a gun to a fistfight or even a goofy zoom in that shops flames into Tony's eyes and then there's the hilarity of OH MY GAWD, ELEPHANTS!? AGAIN!? WHAT'S WITH THE ELEPHANTS??? You managed a whole hour and 40 minutes without them COULD YOU NOT WAIT TO FINISH THE MOVIE?? Why you got a hard-on for elephants?
Wait a second.
...
That "elephant fighting" thing just put this in a whole new perspective.
The worst action sequence by far is the taxi chase which has got to be the worst car chase I've ever seen in a movie.
They're not even cars, they're tiny canopied three-wheelers that goons just jump into and ride individually even though there's no good reason given why any of them jump into them and start driving en masse.
SURE ENOUGH, since they only have three wheels they almost instantly tip over and create a MASSIVE pileup, seriously there's a small army of goons driving these stupid things and the vast majority of them spin out and crash right away.
It's even more hilarious when THEY EXPLODE.
Unfortunately, the hilarity that comes with someone bringing a gun to a fistfight or even a goofy zoom in that shops flames into Tony's eyes and then there's the hilarity of OH MY GAWD, ELEPHANTS!? AGAIN!? WHAT'S WITH THE ELEPHANTS??? You managed a whole hour and 40 minutes without them COULD YOU NOT WAIT TO FINISH THE MOVIE?? Why you got a hard-on for elephants?
Wait a second.
...
That "elephant fighting" thing just put this in a whole new perspective.