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    FILMS

    Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior (2003)
  • Starring Panom Yeerum, Mum Jok Mok, Chatthapong Pantanaunkul

  • Directed by Prachya Pinkaew

  • Guest review written by Stuart Bowen

    • For months now, people have been telling me how great this new Thai martial-arts movie was. Eventually, it was too much for me to bear. After all, I'm the King of B movies. And martial-arts movies are my favored subjects. So finally, I did a little research to find out who sold a version that would work for my region DVD player, with good picture quality, bearable subtitles, and all that sort of thing.

    (Buyer beware: There are companies out there selling copies of Ong Bak that are really low quality. If anyone's interested, I bought mine from Yumyumanime, and it's perfect. Almost. The picture quality is great. The subtitles are at least as good as any other martial-arts import. But the synopsis on the back cover of the DVD case could only have been written by someone who was aware that English is in fact a language, but knew absolutely nothing more about it. There's not a single pronoun in the entire blurb.)

    Now that's out of the way, rest assured that Ong Bak kicks more ass than a kodiak bear with a fire axe. I've watched thousands of fight scenes in my life. From the likes of Hong Kong favorites Jet Li and Jackie Chan, through Toshiro Mifune's chanbara samurai films, to the full spectrum of American martial-arts films. I've even seen some obscure flicks from the Philippines, showcasing their native martial arts of eskrima, arnis, and kali. So it's with a certain sense of ill-gotten authority that I say that Ong Bak's fight scenes were some of the most satisfying slugfests I've seen in a very long time.

    A quick word on muay thai (Thailand's primary martial art, alternatively known as thai boxing): Normally when you see muay thai in movies, it's either being performed by someone who doesn't actually know muay thai (for example, Jean Claude Van Damme in Kickboxer) or by a secondary character in one of those underground tournament movies (for example, Paulo Tocha in Bloodsport).

    Guys like Gary Daniels, Richard Norton, and Olivier Gruner do a nice job of highlighting some muay thai. But it's rare that you get to see the style with any degree of devotion. (The closest we've come up until now, sadly enough, is in Sasha Mitchell's later entries in the Kickboxer series, when he appeared to have done some genuine muay thai training.)

    Ong Bak sort of changes that. On the one hand, it's a Thai production, making things generally more authentic. On the other, Phanom Yeerum combines his traditional muay thai (which differs in some ways from the ring version of muay thai familiar to combat sports fans) with Thai-influenced kung fu and gymnastics. (Trivia fans will be interested to hear that Phanom Yeerum was the stunt double for Robin Shou in the film Mortal Kombat.)

    In any event, I doubt diehard muay thai fans will be disappointed. The ones I heard from certainly weren't. Yeerum not only showcases some of the more elaborate empty-hand maneuvers (e.g., leaping and spinning knees and elbows). He also shows his skills at krabi krabong (Thai weaponry). Including staff, double stick, machete, and a distinctly Thai weapon the name of which I can't remember. It's a section of bamboo tied along each forearm, lending strength to blocks and (God help the other guy) elbow strikes.

    The storyline is, like many martial arts movies, very straightforward. It's sufficient to move you from one fight scene to the next, and not much else. My wife observed once that martial arts movies and X-rated movies have that in common. I just played dumb. "I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with these 'X-rated' movies."

    Essentially, Yeerum's character (Ting) lives in a rural Thai village. Gangsters steal the head of their Buddha statue (for reasons never explained by the subtitles) and Ting volunteers to go to Bangkok and retrieve it. He's a very likeable fish-out-of-water character, as he gets taken advantage of by the jaded characters of Bangkok's underworld. Suffice it to say, though, that each only gets the opportunity to make that mistake once. Ting may be a bit naive, but that doesn't make his flying knees hurt any less.

    OK, if I haven't sold you on Ong Bak yet, there's probably nothing I can say that'll convince you...

    Except perhaps this: If there's a better catches-his-trousers-on-fire-and-then-uses-his- flaming-legs-to-knock-out-a-gangster scene out there, I haven't seen it.