Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior movie review (2005)
I arrived at the movie prepared to take notes on my beloved Levenger Pocket Briefcase, which I lost at Sundance and then miraculously had restored to me. But I found when the movie was over that I had written down its title, and nothing else. That's because there's really nothing to be done with this movie, except watch it. My notes, had I taken them, would have read something like this:
Falls from tall tree.
Chase through streets.
Runs on tops of heads of people.Runs across the tops of market stalls, cars and buses.
Barbed wire!
Fruit Cart Scene!!! Persimmons everywhere!
Illegal boxing club. Breakaway chairs and tables pounded over heads.
Chase scene with three-wheeled scooter-taxis, dozens of them.
Ting catches fire, attacks opponents with blazing legs.
And so on, and on. The movie is based on the assumption, common to almost all martial arts movies, that the world of the hero has been choreographed and cast to supply him with one prop, location and set of opponents after another. Ting needs a couple dozen three-wheelers for a chase scene? They materialize, and all other forms of transportation disappear. He fights 20 opponents at once? Good, but no one is ever able to whack him from behind; they obediently attack him one at a time, and are smashed into defeat.
The plot includes a pretty girl (Pumwaree Yodkamol), who I think is the girlfriend of George (Petchthai Wongkamlao), a friend of Ting's from the village who has become corrupted by Bangkok and betrays him. I was paying pretty close attention, I think, but I can't remember for sure if Ting and the girl ever get anything going, maybe because any romance at all would drag the action to a halt for gooey dialogue. I think they look at each other like they'll get together after the movie.
Did I enjoy "Ong-Bak"? As brainless but skillful action choreography, yes. And I would have enjoyed it even more if I'd known going in that the stunts were being performed in the old-fashioned, pre-computer way. "Ong-Bak" even uses that old Bruce Lee strategy of repeating shots of each stunt from two or three angles, which wreaks havoc with the theory that time flows ceaselessly from the past into the future, but sure goes give us a good look when he clears the barbed wire.
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