Spoiler-free review: Ong-Bak.

[Nishiko]

When I walked into the theater, there was an Asian man and his two near-tween sons sitting at one end of the short back row where I usually plant myself, so I went around to the other end and sat down. As I moved to remove my coat, I looked up and caught the boy nearer me staring in my direction; when our eyes met, he gave me a very solemn nod of greeting, a respectful gesture to the strange girl who came to this movie by her lonesome. I returned the nod with a grin and made myself comfortable with my bottle of Dasani. Thus began my evening with Ong-Bak.

The premise of the movie is very simple. Nong Pradu, a small Thai village way out in the sticks, is an extremely devout community, making seasonal homage to its town deity, Ong-Bak (represented by one of the slender Thai buddha statues), every year. Don, a punk from Bangkok, harasses one of the older men in the village for a religious antique in the man's possession; the man refuses to sell it, saying he's holding it for the time his son Hum Lae, who's in Bangkok, will be ordained as a monk. Out of spite and petty revenge (and, we learn later, the desperate desire to placate the gangster boss he answers to), Don sneaks at night into the humble wooden structure that serves as the village temple and saws off Ong-Bak's head, then spirits it away to Bangkok. The villagers are terrified for their future, and Ting (Tony Jaa), volunteers to get Ong-Bak's head back. As most of the people are elderly or very young, nobody protests Ting's choice, and they send him off with their earnest blessings and gifts of money to help him along. Ting leaves, determined to return with Ong-Bak's head.

You would not believe how many people try to stop him from getting it -- never mind how many methods they use in their attempts to thwart him. O.O

First, the technical points. There's a distinct lack of character development in this film: we learn nothing more than a few things about the major players, and Tony Jaa himself has few speaking lines. The characters, however, remain true to what is shown of them, especially Ting, who never once loses sight of the goal he left Nong Pradu with. It's very obvious from his expressions that Ting isn't fighting because he enjoys it: he's fighting for no other reason than because he absolutely must, that he has been given no other choice but to fight, that negotiations have long been rendered impossible. By the same token, it was so bloody refreshing to have straightforward characters who weren't there to screw with your head. There is a bit of subtext in this film, and the cultural differences between North America and Thailand show in the movie's treatment of certain topics. There was a noticeable overuse of multiple-angle shots, which got boring after the fifth or so occurrence.

That said --

TONY JAA IS EVERY REASON TO SEE THIS MOVIE.

To sum up his skills in a nutshell: the only person to whom I can reasonably compare Tony Jaa is Bruce Lee and nobody else -- no, not even the phenomenal Jet Li (although I've been very impressed by his work of late, I've never seen him fight the way Tony Jaa does in Ong-Bak). This film has, bar none, the best fight scenes I've ever, ever, evar seen (with the exception of his first fight, which is...short *smothers laughter with her hand*, and no, that wasn't a typo), and there aren't copious buckets of blood accompanying them, which was also extremely refreshing. Tony Jaa has singlehandedly and solidly put Muay Thai back on the pop culture map as a viable and desirable martial arts form, and in doing so, I wager he'll kickstart the martial arts genre by dint of people desperately trying to reach for some years to come the towering bar he's now set. And the man is FIT! He is so bloody fit that it's almost scary, and holy shit, can he jump. Just watching him practice as he calls out the names of the moves he's doing is beyond beautiful -- you watch him flow like a Chinese dragon in water and you just know you're looking at an extreme badass. He is technical perfection put to devastating use, and his expertise shines like a nova; he was pulling off kicks I didn't know were possible and wouldn't have known existed if I hadn't seen him do them. What's more -- NO WIRES, NO CG, NO SPECIAL STUNT EFFECTS, none at all, and it almost makes HK films look clunky by comparison. If he isn't getting his pick of Hollywood contracts after this, I'll be well and truly appalled.

Yes, the plot's simple. the ending somewhat predictable, and the characters flat. So what? Go see it for Tony Jaa, like I did -- and will again this weekend. And probably again, too. Phracking wow.