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.

NO BLOW-BLOW

"It's not a blow blow! It is a good fans. You wash the reflay."
BOBBY PACQUIAO's reply to an interviewer asking him whether he really committed those low blows (after his controversial match with the Mexican Hector Velásquez). The Filipino was disqualified for low blows.