REVIEW: Ong-Bak
I know I’m a little late on this one, but I missed it when it came to town. Thanks to the magic of Netflix I finally got a chance to catch up with the Thai action movie Ong-Bak starring that crazy high-flying Tony Jaa. The big hooplah about Ong-Bak was that all the stunts were real: no wires, no computer graphicmatronics, no stunt doubles. I have to say it was indeed pretty crazy how Tony Jaa, playing Ting, the Thai villager sent to the city to retreive the stolen head of the village deity, jumped all crazy in the air and gave a double knee, or double elbowed attack to someone’s head. It was a little slow at first, but there were some good running chase scenes showing off their mad skills like jumping through a loop of barbed wire or flipping between two panes of glass, and the famous or not-so-famous running through a crowd of people by stepping on their heads and shoulders.
Ong-Bak definitely showed Muay Thai as a powerful art, with Tony Jaa demonstrating muay thai routines that looked like they could take out a brick wall (and they damn near did in a few part of the movie). It was nice to see an alternative to the normal high-flying kung-fu action that’s more popular in movies, and it makes me happy that a Thai director is getting a chance to show the world a proud product of his country. However, I didn’t think the action filled out the movie enough… I mean yeah, these guys have to do some crazy stuff and I probably couldn’t run long enough to be in just one of the many action scenes in the movie, but it still didn’t seem like a well-balanced movie.
I would say Ong-Bak was interesting, but not fascinating, so if you are somewhat interested in seeing some crazy martial arts action and high-flying double-knee attacks to the head, I’d say this movie is for you, but I can’t reccomend that you run out right now and buy it. Of interest on the DVD is a special feature showing a live stage performance of Tony Jaa and some of the other stuntmen from the movie, and it was interesting to see the moves live on stage, but all in all, Ong-Bak did not blow my socks off.
The director, Prachya Pinkaew, has a few other movies in the works which look pretty interesting. The most recent one to be hitting English-speaking shores is “Born to Fight” which features more of the same crazy stunts, but this time it’s villagers vs. the government. See the trailer here: Born To Fight
