Film: Ong-Bak
"Ong-Bak"
Thailand: องค์บาก
Director: Prachya Pinakew (2003)
Original Language: Thai
Cast: Tony Jaa, Petchthai Wongkamlao, Pumwaree Yodkamol, Rungrawee Borrijindakul, Wannakit Siriput, Sukhaaw Phongwilai
OMG! The greatest adrenalin rush ever… with the exciting moves and stunts made by first time big time actor Tony Jaa, this film blew every KungFu and Martial Arts oriented films. That goes from Bruce Lee, to Jackie Chan… don’t even mention Jet Li and Zhang Ziyi hehehe… This film is absolutely the best Martial Arts film i’ve ever seen. Despite the very common story in these kinds of films, i never was bored because of the "body work". Tony Jaa performs great jumping skills through his phenomenal acrobatic skills… he jumps on tables and cars like a rubber ball during his chase scenes. and its so great seeing his well choreographed and trained muay thai moves on the fighting scenes. The thing very interesing about his style of fighting is what i always recall about him… he mostly uses elbows and knees which hurts a lot because of how its easy to swing them :).
A great success! It was shown in the Toronto Film Festival and it was showing in Toronto’s silverscreens. The story is all about the head of a buddha statue, which is called the OngBak was stolen film the little town in rural Thailand by a gambling group for selling them in exchange for big profits. It caused a great calamity in the village and Ai Ting is their only hope of getting the head back. He comes to an old friend who’s a native of the village Hum Lae and he went through plenty of things before he could get to the people who stole the head. Muay is a girl who’s HumLae’s friend in the gambling places… they work each other (yup cheating) to gain money from their little bets. When they met Ai Ting, Hum Lae wanted him to be in the boxing arena (a gambling place) so that they can earn money but Don, who stole OngBak was there, and that started them to go closer to the buddha statue.
The big downfall of this film is absolutely the plot for it is indeed like any other martial arts film where there are such lousy stories. the focus would be mostly on the action, but to tell you, the cinematography is absolutely fantastic. didn’t appeal that much in the beginning, but the feeling of intensity (i wanted frustration but i guess that’s a negative word to use) rose when Ai Ting went to the city. the brownness of the surroundings especially in the boxing ring and the streets at night, and even in the final place where Ai Ting fought, all of them made the surroundings quite hard to see in the eye, yet you know things are getting out of hand and it foreshadows the good stuff. the music is Thai-ish, that’s what i love in a purely cultural film, not too much of the modern music in the background except in the city.
overall, i bet people would love to see Tony Jaa’s hardships in this film. The most important thing is that eventhough the plot is kinda common to a lot of martial arts films, its getting more innovative with these ideas that may impress us viewers but which means a whole lot of sweat and blood to the good ol’ filmmakers…
–jic005025MMV1302H
