Ong Bak
Craig
I have a friend (let’s call him Bort) who is a big fan of video games. Bort has played hundreds, if not thousands of titles over the years. I’m fascinated by the opinions of connisours, with little regard to what they specialize in. In this spirit, I’ve quizzed Bort over the years about what he likes in a video game. His answers often surprised me. In fighting games, many of the great technological leaps of recent years, in Bort’s opinion, have made the games worse. He prefers two-dimensional graphics, with very little environmental interaction. Bort’s ideal fighting game is a pure contest of button twiddling, with no stage-induced deaths, no random advantages falling from heaven, no cornering, no dodging completely off the line of attack, and no plot. In Bort’s opinion, the back story for a fighting game should not take more than five words: “You’re this guy; you fight.”
If Bort produced an action movie, I imagine it would be something like Ong Bak.
Release
Fox. Thai with English subtitles, widescreen.
Starring
Tony Jaa, Mum Jokemok, Tony Jaa’s abs, Suchoa Pongvilai, Pumwaree Yodkamol, Chatthapong Pantanaunkul
In Brief
Hoodlums steal the head from the statue of Ong Bak in the village of Nong Pradu. Ting is sent to find the hoods in the big city, and get Ong Bak’s head back on. Because Ting is played by Tony Jaa, he knows Muay Thai.
Ting makes his way to Bangkok, and hooks up with his childhood amigo, Humlae. Humlae wants nothing to do with his past, or his hayseed friends from Nong Pradu, at least until he realizes that Ting could win him a fortune by doing a little prize fighting. No go, says Ting. He’s taken some sort of vow of pacifism, which lasts for intervals of up to five minutes of screen time before he gets cornered into beating down everyone who stands up in frame. Don’t worry; the slow periods are filled with parkour-style chase scenes.
Two points out of ten for realisim, plus seven for holy crap, he just jumped through that barbed wire!
And that’s about it. There’s a subplot about gangsters stealing relics, sort of like Drunken Master II, and some hints about the longstanding cultural rivalry between Thailand and Myanmar, but we should not be fooled into thinking this is a story about relics, faith, politics, or childhood friendships. Ong Bak is about Tony Jaa kicking the crap out of people. The good news is, Tony Jaa kicking the crap out of people makes for fine action cinema.
There’s this guy; he fights.
Jaa pummels faceless goons, hoodlums, trained fighters, untrained fighters, breakaway furniture, just about anything made of glass or glazed clay, some jerk in a pub, aptly named “Mad Dog”, and a refrigerator.
I’m not joking about the refrigerator.
Nice Shots
The whole film is well framed. I liked the shots of Ting leaving his village.
From Jackie Chan, Ong Bak borrows the technique of doing double-takes of the best stunts from multiple angles. Just as I catch myself asking, “Did I just see that?” the film answers, “Yes, you did.”
Best Stunts
Right off the starting blocks, we are treated to a series of falls out of a tree, some from high enough to hit two branches on the way to the ground.
Jaa knows one of the most important things a young action star can know: talented human beings can do things worth watching, and they can do it on a budget. There are few things that please an action movie fan like flying knee strikes.
Insert your own ‘on fire’ joke.
The big fall in the rope fight is good stuff.
Watch for Jaa breaking the helmet off a stuntman’s head with his knee.
Disappointments
This is another one of those subtitle tracks that includes such helpful English translations as “[Speaking Thai]“. Does someone need a fucking memo about the purpose of subtitles?
Also: Fruit cart.
Final Analysis
Well shot, solid acting, comedy that travels well, and a very fresh, creative presentation of Muay Thai. Four stars.
If You Like This
Me, too. There’s no shame in enjoying a good 105 minutes of risk-free violence. Check out Jaa’s follow-up, Protector, also under various other titles, such as Beast Warrior.
As long as we’re watching action stars pummel a huge staff of stuntmen, check out Jet Li in Fist of Legend, and Donnie Yen in In the Line of Duty IV.
September 18th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
This had an American theatrical release, didn’t it? I seem to remember kicking myself for missing it.
Not to derail things here, but as it happens, I just today watched my first-ever Thai movie, Garuda. From it I learned that people in Thailand do a lot of things for no reason whatsoever. Is this idea borne out by this movie? If so, it shows one advantage the martial-arts genre has over the giant monster genre: A martial-arts flick can fill itself to the brim with, well, martial arts, whereas it’s not really feasible - yet - to have a movie about nothing but giant monsters attackin’ stuff. And so giant monster movies need to spend more time being not awesome, and therefore, more time making sense. Speaking of which, am I making any?
September 19th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
I keep hearing Tony Jaa is pretty amazing to watch; I’ll have to check this one out.
September 19th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Matt: Well, I would not say that things in Ong Bak happen for no reason whatsoever. However, based on my limited experience, I would say that the production process involves a man, we’ll call him Bort, watching the dailies. Bort has absolute authority over the cast and crew; they can try to persuade him, but they must ultimately submit to whatever demands Bort places on them. For the most part, Bort just sits there, watching the dailies, and making little “hmpf” noises once in a while. But when he sees something really off-the-wall, Bort goes bug-eyed spastic, starts jumping up and down, blows the frame he likes up to a poster, drools, licks the poster (licks?… Bort is one weird sunufabitch), and screams, “MORE!” The cast and crew must comply. Eventually, if Bort doesn’t get exhausted, or hauled off in a nondescript, white van, other material has to get cut to make room for “MORE!”, because Bort just keeps yelling, straining his bloodshot eyes to take in more of the image from his ten megalumen display system, pausing only to wipe the ink from his tongue.
Truth be told, there is some other stuff going on in Ong Bak, particularly, an interesting look at Buddhism as a part of daily life in Thailand, a subject which always catches my attention in Thai action movies. There’s probably a research paper in there somewhere, but I’ll not be the man to write it. I gloss over such issues in the review, because holy crap, did you see him kick that guy off the table?
Pete: If you enjoy, for example, Jet Li’s performance in Unleashed, this Tony Jaa would be right up your alley. The directness is a refreshing change-up from, say, Drunken Master, and the energy level is astonishing.
September 24th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
I remember hearing a little hype on this, got a pretty good bootleg right away and was surprised that the movie really lived up to the hype.I refer to this as an “evangelical” buddhist film which kicks an insane amount of ass.It really is a film that kinda keeps topping itself in terms of violence (the saw blade fight!) and action to the point where you really wonder what they’re going to do next. The subtitles on my copy are a little better than what you’re describing but with bootlegs it’s always hit or miss.
Luc Besson “presented” this film for the American and Europeon release.I have no idea if those were cut or not or what the subtitles were like.
The director of this film was saying that sometimes they would have to do more than one take just because the stunts didn’t look painful enough. That’s commitment and that’s crazy.Hmmm, he might have been talking about the follow-up film but what the hell a philosophy’s a philosophy!
I would also recommend to people who like this, the film “Born To Fight”. Soccer kids vs. soldiers and unbelievable amounts of mayhem.One of the most painful looking stunts ever involving a fight on top of side by side semi trucks on a highway.Genius!