KICKING AN AIRBORNE OPPONENT - TONY JAA STYLE

Tony Jaa ran fast gathering enough momentum throwing himself high up in the air. Mid-air he took a sip of wine while reading Fortune….oops wrong sequence! Mid-air, Tony flipped himself over kneeing the villain who is hanging for dear life on the helicopter! It is just one of the spectacular stunts in the Thai movie – Tom Yum Goong – Tony’s second most explosive movie!

The story is simple. Tony Jaa plays Kham whose elephants were stolen by some criminal group and illegally transported to Australia. It is Kham’s duty to recover the elephants for the Thais regard it as more than pets but brothers and are treated with respect and care. To do so, he single-handedly attacked 50 – 60 bad guys on a hotel, battled several big guys using elephant bone and arrived in Australia without speaking English at all. One thing I’ve learned about watching Tony Jaa’s movies is it’s bad to piss the guy off!

Again, he uses his spectacular Muay Thai skills on his way to regain the animals. As usual, critics dismissed the movie but it doesn’t matter to me. When watching a martial arts movie expect brutal action – I did and I enjoyed it – save for the melodramatic excesses at the end (which I think is unnecessarily long). I was a bit embarrassed seeing Tony cry for it doesn’t look good.

The Thais turned the Hollywood Asian stereotypes around with excellent results. This time the Asians are the heroes as it should be since martial arts was invented here. It is a great movie esp. for action fans. I’m glad Asia found a worthy successor to martial arts legend – Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan.

Ong Bak

Ong Bak is a Thai film about a man Boonting (Tony Jaa) who went to the city to recover a stolen head of Buddha (Buddha statuette is called by the villagers as Ong Bak). To the poor villagers, Ong Bak is their god and losing it is a disaster for them. Boonting uses his Muay Thai skills against enemies who want to stop him from his quest. I don't want to use give any more details or I'll spoil the movie for you.
I've heard of this movie through word-of-mouth with people telling me about the "spectacular fight scenes". I've seen Muay Thai before and I believe in its effectiveness. Muay Thai moves are regularly employed in MMA fights. When I saw the movie, my admiration for Thai boxing increased even more. I saw moves I've never seen before. In fact, the movie is refreshing as it’s not overloaded with special effects (sfx only makes a martial art move look unnatural in a movie) which have become a staple in film making nowadays. All outrageous Muay Thai moves and stunts were done naturally or so the producer said (Tony Jaa can perform these moves and stunts live backing the claim up successfully).
I'm familiar with Kung Fu movies so when I expect a kick, Tony knees his opponents. He also displayed his mastery of other martial arts like Wushu (when he used those long sticks reminiscent of Jet Li in Hero), and Arnis (when he used two sticks to beat up another adversary) in the movie.
If there's any showcase piece for Muay Thai, Ong Bak can claim it. The film lived up and exceeded my expectations.

Scenes from ONG BAK with music from Story of the Year