Throatpunch

Score: 6/10

After the success of Ong Bak, the world waited eagerly for a new Tony Jaa movie. The year 2005 brought us Tom Yum Goong, or The Protector for us Americans. And The Warrior King, Thai Dragon, Revenge of the Warrior, and Honor of the Beast for people in other parts of the world. Confusing, huh? In addition to the wide assortment of titles, there are just as many different edits. I’m reviewing the US release, so all references will be to The Protector.

A boy and his elephants.

The Plot

In a nutshell, replace the statue’s head from Ong Bak with a pair of elephants, and you’ve got The Protector. Oh… and his name is not Ting, it’s Kham. And he goes to Australia instead of Bangkok. Get the picture? Sadly, The Protector is a case of “one step forward, two steps back”. Sure, we get crazy stunts and ass-kickings galore, but what should be a simple story is muddled and cluttered. I realize that part of it might be due to distributors chopping out scenes from the movie, but come on; in addition to Tony Jaa trying to get his elephants back, there’s a transgendered restaurant owner cozying up with a corrupt police inspector, and who knows what else going on in the plot. I’m not some neo-conservative backwater religious nut who freaks out over a female character who wasn’t actually born with a vagina, but it really didn’t serve much of a point.

It’s a shemalé!

The Cast

Okay, so we’ve got Tony Jaa playing a country bumpkin who’s gone to the big city to retrieve a statue’s head his elephants. We’ve also got the dude who played George/Humlae in Ong Bak, this time playing a cop. He speaks English throughout much of the film, but the subtitles only show up when people are speaking Thai, which sucks, because his accent is so thick he might as well be speaking Thai. Even the people who released The Harder They Come on DVD had the sense to add a subtitle option even though the movie is entirely in English.

I’ve already mentioned that the chief bad guy is a shemale restaurateur who is getting it on with a corrupt cop. She also has a henchman named Johnny who sells drugs on the side. Johnny seems like a badass at first, but he’s dispensed of rather unceremoniously. Plus, his drug trade is guarded by BMXers and rollerbladers from The X Games.

And finally, there’s a whole parade of people who line up to get their domes smashed by Tony Jaa (notable among them is former WWE wrestler Nathan Jones). When I say “parade”, I’m not fucking around; I’m pretty sure he beats up a couple of giant balloons from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

Oh yeah… There’s a Jackie Chan look-alike in the movie, too.

The Twenty Minute Rule

At a little past nineteen minutes in, Tony Jaa is flying through a door and putting the hurt on some people at a karaoke party. Then it’s off to Australia for more beatdowns, so no complaints here.

Let’s get this party started!

The Movie

If it sounds like I’m down on The Protector, it’s because I am. I just don’t think it’s a worthy follow-up to Ong Bak. What was bad about Ong Bak is worse in The Protector, and what was good about Ong Bak wasn’t really improved upon in this movie.

What should really be a simple, straightforward story about a guy trying to get his stolen elephants back is kind of all over the place. Here’s the deal: in my humble opinion, a competent martial arts movie should be like a porn movie. In a porn movie, when the cable guy shows up to fix the cable, he doesn’t really fix the cable, he fucks the girl who answers the door. And so it should be in a martial arts movie. When the protaganist arrives at a location, it should be for the sole purpose of chewing bubblegum and kicking ass but being all out of bubblegum. There’s a scene in The Protector where Tony Jaa and the cop go to a Buddhist temple… then leave. Then out of nowhere, they decide — for no real reason — to go back to the temple, where all manner of hell breaks loose. If you’re going to make a basic, by the numbers action flick, the non-action sequences should at least be serviceable. That’s just not the case in The Protector.

How do the fight scenes in The Protector hold up? Funny you should ask… that’s the only thing that keeps me from giving this a 5 out of 10 and relegating it to the “merely average” dustbin. One of the early fight scenes features Jaa going up against a gang of thugs on skateboards, BMX bikes and an ATV or two. The stunts are cool and all, but it just doesn’t seem… natural. Tony Jaa is billed as a human being who can do superhuman shit without the aid of wires, so putting his fights in a realistic context helps to highlight his abilities. This extreme sports scenario smacks of some focus group head saying, “I hear the kids are into extreme sports these days. Let’s put Tony Jaa up against some kids on motocross bikes! That will be ‘super groovy’ as you young people like to say.”

On the plus side, here is where they got things right: there is one fight scene that is over four minutes long, and it’s done in a single take. Even better, it’s done quite well in a single take. That’s the kind of innovation I was hoping for in The Protector, so props to them for doing it right.

There’s also a scene that I interpreted as Tony Jaa saying “Fuck you!” to Steven Seagal. I’m probably reaching, I know, but when Tony Jaa broke the limbs of about 50 anonymous bad guys (if this had been a Star Trek episode, these dudes would have been all wearing red shirts), it basically summed up Steven Seagal’s entire filmography in a few short minutes. Again, I know I’m reaching, but I really want to live in a world where martial arts movies offer symbolic middle fingers to Steven Seagal. Chuck Norris, too. Fuck that dude.

Seriously. Fuck you, Steven Seagal.

In closing, Tony Jaa fans will enjoy The Protector, if only because Tony Jaa does what he’s expected to do. Fans of martial arts films in general will — for the most part — like the fight scenes, but squirm through all the other crap. If you don’t fall into either of those categories, you probably won’t enjoy this one. I liked it, but just barely.

Score: 7/10

Martial arts movies went mainstream in a big way towards the end of the last century. 1998 gave us the Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker buddy cop movie, Rush Hour. In 1999, The Matrix distracted viewers from Keanu Reeves’ and Carrie-Anne Moss’s lack of onscreen chemistry by showcasing the fight choreography of Hong Kong legend Yuen Woo-ping. Yuen again choreographed the action in the wire-fu blockbuster Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Before long, the phrase “played out” started being tossed around whenever the words “martial arts” were uttered. When Crispin Glover and Drew Barrymore  are flying around like Shaolin masters in Charlie’s Angels and the zombies in a Uwe Fucking Boll movie know kung fu, then yeah, “played out” is an apt description.

Just as the death of Bruce Lee left a massive void in the martial arts film industry of the seventies, the mainstream acceptance of the same stars who had filled Lee’s shoes created a stagnancy in chop socky movies in the early 21st Century. That all changed in 2003, thanks to a little movie from Thailand known as Ong Bak.

The Plot

When the head of Ong Bak, the revered Buddha statue in Nang Pradu village is stolen, Ting (Tony Jaa) volunteers to go to Bangkok and retrieve the relic. He [SPOILER ALERT!] eventually succeeds, but only after planting his fists, feet, knees and elbows into the faces of numerous bad guys.

Ting must jump through hoops to retrieve the statue’s head.

Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

The Cast

Let’s face it; Tony Jaa is not going to win any acting awards. His range basically consists of asking a question (in this case, “Where is Ong Bak?”) in an angry tone before throwing down. Then again, if you look at martial arts as an extreme form of sign language, then Jaa is indeed very convincing.

Ting, the Pradu Legend!

This is definitely one of Ong Bak’s strong points, and a strong point of director Prachya Pinkaew’s movies in general. It’s like they know they don’t have much of a story and the actors aren’t all that great, so the idea is to sell the stunts convincingly enough so that the audience will overlook the film’s other shortcomings. Ong Bak is really nothing more than the tried-and-true “fish out of water” story, but instead of winning the hearts and minds of the city folk through his homespun charm, Jaa beats them into submission. Hey, whatever works, right?

Jaa has two sidekicks in the movie, George/Humlae, who is from the same village and Muay Lek, who helps George pull off his two-bit scams. They’re supposed to be comic relief, but the problem is, they’re not very funny. Fortunately, by the time they get to be too intolerable, it’s time for Tony Jaa to crack someone’s skull with a well-placed knee or elbow.

The “comic” relief

The chief bad guy is a degenerate gambler who speaks with one of those Peter Frampton devices. Even though he has a hole in his neck indicating a laryngectomy, I think it might be an affectation. I swear he yells in one scene without the aid of his electrolarynx (thanks, Wikipedia, for telling me what those Peter Frampton devices are called!). Oh… and chief bad guy apparently finances his gambling habit by selling stolen treasures to international collectors.

Do you feel like we do?

Chief bad guy has a bodyguard who is a hard motherfucker. He’s probably not a very good actor, either, because I don’t think he had a single line of dialogue. For most of the movie he’s standing around glowering, hoping that his boss will order him to fuck someone up so he’ll have an excuse to inject massive amounts of performance enhancing drugs.

Yeah, I think “glowering” was the right word.

All in all, the cast isn’t that great, but it’s not too hard to overlook since the people who matter the most in Ong Bak are stuntmen, not thespians.

The Twenty Minute Rule

Hmmm… twenty minutes in, not much has happened, really. The movie starts off with the young men of Nang Pradu village fighting for some sacred banner in a huge — I mean HUGE — tree, but it really doesn’t serve as a hint of what’s to come. We also get to see Tony Jaa give a brief exhibition of Muay boran, in which he gives the inevitable pledge to never, under any circumstances, actually use this deadly martial art. Fortunately for us, Ting is in Bangkok for all of 5 minutes before he forgets his promise.

In spite of a slow start, once Ong Bak gets moving, it keeps a brisk pace throughout. You are forgiven this time, Prachya Pinkaew.

The Movie

If you’re bored with what Hong Kong has to offer in the martial arts genre, Ong Bak is a delight to watch. The stunts — not just the fights — are dazzling… for the most part. There’s an extended foot chase in which Jaa does some amazing stuff; he even manages to make jumping through some bubbles look cool. Later on, however, there’s a vehicle chase where the stunts are just silly in comparison to the things Jaa does with his own body (The story goes that Jaa grew up idolizing Jackie Chan and Jet Li, not knowing that they used wires to assist with their stunts). The fights are whole different story. This isn’t stylized ballet performed while dangling from wires; Muay Boran is a martial art whose goal is to immobilze opponents in a quick and painful manner. Ong Bak‘s fight scenes aren’t the least bit graceful; they’re brutal… and that’s a Good Thing.

Just one of dozens of people who get beat up by Tony Jaa.

Ong Bak is really just a Thai filmmaker’s calling card, serving notice to the rest of the world that maybe it’s time to get back to basics when it comes to martial arts movies. You don’t need tragic love triangles and set pieces that look like music videos; you just need a guy going from point A to point B, kicking all kinds of ass along the way.

It’s not anywhere near a perfect film, but it’s definitely worth checking out.

Score: 8/10

I was going to review Ong Bak for my inaugural post, but have decided instead to review Battle Royale. Why? Because it’s fucking awesome, that’s why!

Ninth grade isn’t supposed to be this tough…

To be more specific, allow me to elaborate…

For starters, I feel sorry for people who refuse to watch subtitled movies. I can perfectly understand if someone has dyslexia or some other condition that makes reading difficult, but if you can read on an eighth grade level, subtitles shouldn’t be a problem. It’s sad that I know so many people who say, “I don’t like having to read movies.” I have to wonder if people back in the late 1920s would say, “I don’t like having to listen to movies” when talkies were introduced.

Here’s the deal: if you refuse to watch foreign movies because they’re subtitled, you are essentially cutting yourself off from the majority of the world’s movies. More importantly, you’re cutting yourself off from some really good movies; movies that won’t ever be getting the Hollywood treatment. Battle Royale is a perfect example of this, and it’s the main reason I chose it as my first review.

The Plot

In Japan of the near future, society is in disarray and juvenile delinquency is at an all-time high. One way in which the government deals with the problem is by — once a year — shipping a random 9th grade class to a deserted island and giving them 72 hours to fight to the death. To keep things competitive, there are certain rules. First, all participants have collars around their necks that have an explosive charge. If there’s more than one student alive at the end of the 72 hours, all the collars go boom. Second, every four hours, certain areas of the island are declared off limits; if you’re in one of the forbidden zones, your collar goes boom. This prevents students from just holing up somewhere and hiding. And finally, there are a wide variety of weapons randomly assigned to the kids. One boy gets a crossbow. A girl gets a stun gun. One kid gets a pot lid. Yes, a pot lid.

Is this kid even in our class?

The Cast

With 40 students given the task of killing one another, don’t expect much in the way of character development. Plus, it’s hard to tell whether anyone in the movie is a bad actor, seeing that most of them spend a minute or two on screen before getting whacked by one of their classmates. The standout, by far, is Takeshi “Beat” Kitano, who plays the supervisor of Battle Royale and — incidentally – happened to be this class’s 7th grade teacher, hinting that the whole “random lottery” selection process might be a little corrupt. Kitano is known and loved by many Americans as Vic Romano, a.k.a “that guy on MXC, that crazy Japanese game show on Spike TV”. Kitano also happens to be a respected actor and filmmaker in Japan; if you’re only familiar with him from MXC, you’re in for a shock: he’s a badass in this movie!

Hey, it’s that dude on MXC!

Another recognizable face in the movie is Chiaki Kuriyama. Who, you ask? She was Gogo, the ass-kicking Japanese schoolgirl in Kill Bill, Vol. 1. She’s not quite as ruthless as she was in Kill Bill, but she does manage to protect her virtue with some good, old-fashioned violence. If you’re looking for High School femme fatales, though, don’t worry: at least one of the girls in Battle Royale takes to killing like a fish to water.

Hey, it’s Gogo from Kill Bill!

On the whole, any flaws in the casting can be overlooked by their authenticity. Remember, these are supposed to be 9th graders. If this was an American production, the youngest person in the cast would probably be 28 years old. The kids look like 9th graders, and more importantly, act like 9th graders. Some of the boys are more concerned about losing their virginity than they are with losing their lives. Some girls in the class decide to set up house in an abandoned lighhouse, and in one of the movie’s highlights, typical high school rivalries get taken to an extreme. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

I think she has some serious Daddy Issues.

The Twenty Minute Rule

No complaints here. In the first twenty minutes, we get to see a knife to a forehead, and a demonstration of those explosive collars. Not only that, we get to see one of the film’s best moments, a crazy instructional video where an overly enthusiastic Japanese chick explains the rules of the game. So yeah, Battle Royale doesn’t waste any time.

You might want to pay attention to this part…

The Movie

There’s a lot of hype surrounding this movie, and it’s rightfully deserved. I went into it with my expectations low, figuring that it just couldn’t be as cool as it sounded. I could’ve set the bar much higher and I still would have been really impressed. Yes, it’s that good. If anything, Battle Royale serves as a perfect introduction to the world of foreign movies. Not only is it a great movie, it’s the kind of great movie that doesn’t get made in Hollywood.

As you can probably tell, I really dig this flick. If you like action movies, or if you like movies that are twisted, then Battle Royale delivers. I could list hundreds of movies that sound great in concept, but fail miserably in the execution department (by execution, I mean the making of, not in relation to body count…) If you’re looking for a movie about a man’s heartwarming journey of self-discovery, look elsewhere. That’s not to say Battle Royale doesn’t have a message. Throughout history, governments have scapegoated the weakest, most disenfranchised elements of society as a means to distract from the real issues. Battle Royale takes that premise to its (il)logical extreme.

Lest I sound like a fanboy in my praise, I will say that the movie is not without its faults. I can’t really say that I liked the ending, because the Director’s Cut of the film has about a dozen endings tacked on in the form of flashbacks, exposition, and who knows what else. There are a couple of points in the final ten minutes where they could have just faded to black and everyone would be all, “fuck yeah, that was rad!”, but the director thought we needed to see a basketball bouncing in slo-mo and reverse. That’s fucking deep, man.

Oh, and did I mention that Battle Royale is based on a wildly popular Japanese novel that I haven’t read?