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Topic: Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior / The Protector (Read 4610 times)
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UnSub
Contributor
Posts: 8064
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Anyone else seen this?
As a martial arts movie, the narrative sucks, the acting is iffy and sometimes the camera work leaves room for improvement.
But most importantly: I walk out every time I see this film wanting to just elbow everyone in the head. The fight set pieces are brilliant. Tony Jaa is incredible, as is the stunt team who would be knocked unconscious a few times to get the right shot.
If you want a dumb action film, get this out and at least flick through to the fight scenes.
Edit: Title, Anal retentive schild strikes again! (fun movie!)
EDIT2: To add in discussion about "The Protector", since we were going down that path anyway.
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« Last Edit: December 16, 2008, 05:45:45 PM by UnSub »
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stray
Terracotta Army
Posts: 16818
has an iMac.
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Yeah, Tony Jaa is great. I can forgive storyline.. What martial arts movie truly has a good storyline? Even Bruce Lee and Sonny Chiba films pretty much suck in that respect too. But they were genius choreographers and had charisma.. And Jaa is the same way too. And he's unique in that he mixes fast pace street fighting antics with muay thai. He's got a niche that no one else does. Good enough!
Check out the Protector as well.
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squirrel
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Awesome film. There's a couple moves - particularly in the pit fight scenes - that i watched 4 or 5 times in a row.
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Speaking of marketing, we're out of milk.
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Hoax
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8110
l33t kiddie
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I like when he rips the sink of the wall and throws it. This movie is fucking amazingly awesome. It does make me want to elbow or knee anyone I see for the next 4 hours though.
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A nation consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, then that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation. -William Gibson
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Chenghiz
Terracotta Army
Posts: 868
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The Protector has even more bone crunching awesomeness than Ong-Bak though on the whole I felt it was slightly worse, for reasons unknown even to myself.
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UnSub
Contributor
Posts: 8064
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"The Protector" really starts off slow - the whole 'bonding with elephants' thing is a bit overdrawn - but when the action bits kick in it is awesome plus. Jaa running up a glass wall before it gets a quad bike driven through it, the fight against the roided up guy, the water / fire fight vs the capoeria artist, the walk up to the 'restaurant' - all stuff that makes a lot of Hollywood action films look really weak in comparison. Plus I got to laugh like a drain at a baby elephant being thrown through a plate glass window. You don't see that every day!
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stray
Terracotta Army
Posts: 16818
has an iMac.
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It's quite nice too that his films get a decent budget. He doesn't really need to go to the USA or be big here to get the Hollywood treatment (they'd probably fuck him up anyways).
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nurtsi
Terracotta Army
Posts: 291
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Ong Bak 2 was released in Thailand in the beginning in December. Found some promo reel material, it looks awesome beyond words.
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Aez
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Posts: 1369
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stray
Terracotta Army
Posts: 16818
has an iMac.
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I wonder if that new one is really called "Ong Bak 2" or if it's just a Western re-title.
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photek
Terracotta Army
Posts: 618
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That looks badass. Less elephants though.
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"I recently went to a new doctor and noticed he was located in something called the Professional Building. I felt better right away"
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UnSub
Contributor
Posts: 8064
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nurtsi
Terracotta Army
Posts: 291
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Just saw the real sequel, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0785035/. I was a little disappointed by it. The choreography and awesomeness of the previous flicks is largely missing. Maybe it is because of the setting. No more driving quad bikes through windows or jump kicking people from helicopters or cracking motorcycle helmets with knees. Only in the end we get some great fighting resembling the previous movies. One thing that bugs me a bit is that Tony Jaa doesn't do as much Muay Thai in this. He has obviously trained and is very versatile fighter using a shit ton of different weapons and styles. We get to see many different styles of kung-fu: drunken fist, tiger, monkey, mantis etc. Of course this shows that Tony is incredible skilled, but we've seen so many kung-fu movies already that the freshness of the first two movies is not there. The movie ends in such a cliffhanger that it makes you mad. I guess they're doing a trilogy from this.
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Mattemeo
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1128
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Ong Bak and Warrior King/The Protector/Tom Yum Goong are an odd couple - essentially, they're the same movie, only the latter has a considerably larger budget and an even more implausible storyarc. Of the two, Ong Bak is easily the better all round movie, though the stuntwork and fights are far more intensively choreographed in Tom Yum Goong, for example the incredible Restaurant 360 tracking shot (the one you see was the third take, done in a row, Jaa was utterly exhausted by the time they got it) which feels like Pinkaew's 'Thais do it better!' retort to the much loved hallway fight in Oldboy.
The trouble with Tom Yum Goong is it's really let down by the 'bigger is better!' attitude and where Ong Bak felt heartfelt and believable, if silly, Tom Yum Goong is a flimsy excuse for sequencing outrageous fightscenes. And ok, there's nothing essentially wrong with that, it just lacks the charm of its older, leaner brother. Even Jaa's character is more likeable in Ong Bak, whereas he's pretty much a stonecold psycho in Tom Yum Goong when he's not with his elephants.
Plots (or lack of coherant ones at any rate) aside, there's really no other movies out there with fight scenes that can compare - full contact martial arts is a shocking revelation when we're so used to the wire-fu wuxia we've been spoon-fed in the last decade or so. Not even old-school Bruce Lee flicks have the same visceral realness of Jaa's movies, every ribsnapping, jawbreaking, skullsmashing elbow and knee or impromptu weapon landing with real force (the main rule in the fighting was 'no full blows to the face'). The injury list must be horrifying come wrap-time but my god does it make for awesome viewing.
I'm really looking forward to Ong Bak 2. I have no hopes it'll be a good movie, but I'm prepared to be wincing with sympathy pains for days after!
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« Last Edit: April 10, 2009, 04:53:31 AM by Mattemeo »
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If you party with the Party Prince you get two complimentary after-dinner mints
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