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Ong-Bak
Just watched Ong-Bak. Or, rather, just had Ong-Bak on in the background while I ran about and did other stuff. This means I missed a lot of plot which, as far as I could tell from the bits of plot I managed to catch, was all to the good.
Ong-Bak is a Thai kick flick, featuring the very pretty and very violent martial art known as Muy Thai, and starring the very pretty and very violent Tony Jaa. These are just about the only two reasons for watching it, because the story phones it in. No, not even phones it in, it phones a neighboring country and they have to send a kid on an elephant to go get it.
The basic idea is that Ting (Jaa) is a young man in a rural Thai village, who is a devout follower of the peaceful Buddhist religion, and as such, has been highly trained in one of the most vicious fighting systems out there. Plot happens, which results in the head of the village's small statue of Buddha (the Ong-Bak of the title) being stolen by a no-good village man who's moved to Bangkok and is working for a gangster who runs drugs and antiquities, so Ting has to go to the wilds of Bangkok and retrieve it. If he doesn't retrive it, the village will be destroyed, and this is seen at one point in the movie where the well has run dry and there's lots of dust around. This made little sense to me, because I have obviously not read enough about Buddhism. In my studies, I seem to have missed the aspect of Buddha that is a vengeful deity who will destroy an entire village because of a decapitated statue. Peace, love, non-attachment, and don't steal my head.
Once Ting gets to Bangkok, he manages to get roped into underground fighting, despite being a peaceful Buddhist who only wants the head of Buddha back. WHy he does is plot. Don't bother with it. There's a pretty impressive street chase scene when a gang chases Ting and the Doomed Comedy Sidekick (TM) that's almost worthy of Jackie Chan, wherein Tony Jaa gets to show off his leaping and sliding skills. And then more underground fighting, and eventually a showdown in a cavern where the bad guy has a gang slicing the head off of a giant statue of Buddha, for some reason.
My basic advice about the movie is to rent it for cheap, put it on, leave the Thai soundtrack on and don't worry about the subtitles, and then fast-forward through any plot. You won't miss a thing.
The three reasons to watch it are: Tony Jaa, Muy Thai, and the GIANT KILLER BUDDHA HEAD OF JUSTICE!!! at the end. Tony Jaa's abs are a special highlight. The cinematography is pretty good, too: they obviously spent the script budget on the cinematography and had to bribe the intern to write the script.
Ong Bak, starring Tony Jaa's abs.
Tony Jaa, cute in that vaguely doofy sort of way.
Jaa spends a good deal of the movie not actually touching the ground. This also illustrates a theory I have that goes much like this: Bangkok residents are so jaded that nothing, but nothing will faze them in the least. And, as you can tell from this shot, it starts young. Note how none of the kids are paying the slightest attention to the man leaping over them, pursued by a street gang only about fifty feet away.
And again: note that there's only one guy even bothering to look at Tony Jaa leaping and doing the splits over this rack of unidentifiable sharo metal implements. He's probably thinking "I've seen better."
And when carrying a large loop of barbed wire attached to a stick, as you do, people probably jump through it all the time. At least accoring to that guy on the left.
This picture by itself doesn't really have a purpose except to draw your attention to the featurless garage door on the left, because....
...a message appears a split second later, before Jaa's even finished his leap, reading "Hi Speilberg. Let do it together."
And again with the jaded Bangkok residents. This guy's just had a guy leap over his car and is about to be mobbed by a street gang. Note how he's still casually got his elbow up.
And then Jaa and the gang round a street corner ... and the same car shows up again. Marauding street gangs must be considered just a minor nuisance, like squirrels.
Now we hit some of the underground fights, where they got a bunch of drunk GIs to act as extras. The big fuzzy guy never had his nationality stated, but since they were hitting the "America shows respect to Thai martial arts" theme really hard at the end of the scene, I think he's supposed to be American. In which case, he inexplicably has an Aussie accent.
This is really what you rented the movie for:
And this:
For those who don't know, Muy Thai (also known as Thai kickboxing), is pretty vicious and features lots of knee and elbo strikes as well as kicks. I think the idea is to hit your opponent with whatever body part is handy. Case in point: Tony Jaa can defeat all opponents with his patented Crotch-FuTM!
But despite suffocating his opponent with his crotch, he's still a good Buddhist boy who respects his opponent:
There is a big car-chase-fu scene starring these three-wheeled taxicabs, which will never not be funny:
You'll note they explode as easily as American cars do.
And another shot of Tony Jaa's abs, sicne they're one of the best parts of the movie.
The movie also has a cameo by some Burmese abs.
In addition to Crotch-FuTM, Jaa is a master of Elbow-Fu:
And more Elbow-Fu.
And a third variety of Elbow-Fu. Jaa is nothing if not creative.
And then he add a little bit of variety by going in for some Knee-FuTM
When all seems darkest, never fear. The Lord Buddha is there smiling benevolently upon you, ready to crush all opponents with his mighty rolling head.
And in the end, Tony Jaa gets towear a bad bald cap shave his head and ride an elephant. The village need no longer cower in fear that a giant rolling head of the vengeful yet merciful Buddha will appear out of nowhere and strike them down, for they have the head of their Ong-Bak statue back.
Ong-Bak is a Thai kick flick, featuring the very pretty and very violent martial art known as Muy Thai, and starring the very pretty and very violent Tony Jaa. These are just about the only two reasons for watching it, because the story phones it in. No, not even phones it in, it phones a neighboring country and they have to send a kid on an elephant to go get it.
The basic idea is that Ting (Jaa) is a young man in a rural Thai village, who is a devout follower of the peaceful Buddhist religion, and as such, has been highly trained in one of the most vicious fighting systems out there. Plot happens, which results in the head of the village's small statue of Buddha (the Ong-Bak of the title) being stolen by a no-good village man who's moved to Bangkok and is working for a gangster who runs drugs and antiquities, so Ting has to go to the wilds of Bangkok and retrieve it. If he doesn't retrive it, the village will be destroyed, and this is seen at one point in the movie where the well has run dry and there's lots of dust around. This made little sense to me, because I have obviously not read enough about Buddhism. In my studies, I seem to have missed the aspect of Buddha that is a vengeful deity who will destroy an entire village because of a decapitated statue. Peace, love, non-attachment, and don't steal my head.
Once Ting gets to Bangkok, he manages to get roped into underground fighting, despite being a peaceful Buddhist who only wants the head of Buddha back. WHy he does is plot. Don't bother with it. There's a pretty impressive street chase scene when a gang chases Ting and the Doomed Comedy Sidekick (TM) that's almost worthy of Jackie Chan, wherein Tony Jaa gets to show off his leaping and sliding skills. And then more underground fighting, and eventually a showdown in a cavern where the bad guy has a gang slicing the head off of a giant statue of Buddha, for some reason.
My basic advice about the movie is to rent it for cheap, put it on, leave the Thai soundtrack on and don't worry about the subtitles, and then fast-forward through any plot. You won't miss a thing.
The three reasons to watch it are: Tony Jaa, Muy Thai, and the GIANT KILLER BUDDHA HEAD OF JUSTICE!!! at the end. Tony Jaa's abs are a special highlight. The cinematography is pretty good, too: they obviously spent the script budget on the cinematography and had to bribe the intern to write the script.
Ong Bak, starring Tony Jaa's abs.
Tony Jaa, cute in that vaguely doofy sort of way.
Jaa spends a good deal of the movie not actually touching the ground. This also illustrates a theory I have that goes much like this: Bangkok residents are so jaded that nothing, but nothing will faze them in the least. And, as you can tell from this shot, it starts young. Note how none of the kids are paying the slightest attention to the man leaping over them, pursued by a street gang only about fifty feet away.
And again: note that there's only one guy even bothering to look at Tony Jaa leaping and doing the splits over this rack of unidentifiable sharo metal implements. He's probably thinking "I've seen better."
And when carrying a large loop of barbed wire attached to a stick, as you do, people probably jump through it all the time. At least accoring to that guy on the left.
This picture by itself doesn't really have a purpose except to draw your attention to the featurless garage door on the left, because....
...a message appears a split second later, before Jaa's even finished his leap, reading "Hi Speilberg. Let do it together."
And again with the jaded Bangkok residents. This guy's just had a guy leap over his car and is about to be mobbed by a street gang. Note how he's still casually got his elbow up.
And then Jaa and the gang round a street corner ... and the same car shows up again. Marauding street gangs must be considered just a minor nuisance, like squirrels.
Now we hit some of the underground fights, where they got a bunch of drunk GIs to act as extras. The big fuzzy guy never had his nationality stated, but since they were hitting the "America shows respect to Thai martial arts" theme really hard at the end of the scene, I think he's supposed to be American. In which case, he inexplicably has an Aussie accent.
This is really what you rented the movie for:
And this:
For those who don't know, Muy Thai (also known as Thai kickboxing), is pretty vicious and features lots of knee and elbo strikes as well as kicks. I think the idea is to hit your opponent with whatever body part is handy. Case in point: Tony Jaa can defeat all opponents with his patented Crotch-FuTM!
But despite suffocating his opponent with his crotch, he's still a good Buddhist boy who respects his opponent:
There is a big car-chase-fu scene starring these three-wheeled taxicabs, which will never not be funny:
You'll note they explode as easily as American cars do.
And another shot of Tony Jaa's abs, sicne they're one of the best parts of the movie.
The movie also has a cameo by some Burmese abs.
In addition to Crotch-FuTM, Jaa is a master of Elbow-Fu:
And more Elbow-Fu.
And a third variety of Elbow-Fu. Jaa is nothing if not creative.
And then he add a little bit of variety by going in for some Knee-FuTM
When all seems darkest, never fear. The Lord Buddha is there smiling benevolently upon you, ready to crush all opponents with his mighty rolling head.
And in the end, Tony Jaa gets to
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Oh, lord.
Uh, could I
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why did LJ not post this the first time? Bad LJ! No biscuit!
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I understood the plot about as much as the second time I saw it -with- english subtitles =P
But wait. There's more!
Try and find and watch a copy of the second movie, called Tom Yum Goong =) It's not a sequel, but it has the same characters in it (namely Tony and the tubby cousin guy). It also has stolen baby elephants, resteraunts selling endangered species, and something like a 15 minute long fight scene.
Oh and it's set in Sydney.
How can you go wrong?
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...
Uh, with laughter! The crotch-fu caption killed me with laughter. I can just imagine his Balls of Steel bonging against that guys forehead and rendering him unconcious while he's busy airing out his armpits XD
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Can't breathe: laughing too hard. *wheeze*
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* by which I mean "any".
Hey, I love kick flicks. And sometimes they can be done right, with a story that intrigues you as much as the action does, but in this case it didn't and it was the major flaw of the film.
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I think when I take my trip over, I'll have to load up on DVD's just for the hell of it (ok, if nothing else for my mom to have things to watch in her language).
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But I wish you'd add screencaps of my two favorite moments, when Tony Jaa rolls through two plates of glass that people are carrying through the streets so someone can roll through them, and when he throws someone through a second story window, then leaps out after them and kicks them on the way down.
Tony Jaa is incredible. A real story would merely have distracted from his abs and Muay Thai, in my opinion, and so would not have actually improved the movie.
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Oh, man, now I want to go get a hold of crappy martial arts movies. *ded*
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Just have to say, your review was so great, it inspired me to make an icon!
Thanks for the laughs! Ta.
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Though I must say I'm a complete fan of this movie because there are SO MANY MORE WORSE Martial Arts movies than this one. It's the first one I've watched in a while that actually got me excited about the ACTION, and I could completely overlook the usual presence of the flimsy plot. Muy Thai has also inspired me as one of the awesomest Martial arts since it IS a vicious. I have to give kudos to a movie that makes me want to diss every other form of martial arts in the world.
But dear lord, you have created some comedy gold here.
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The unique interpretation of Buddhism it started with sort of set the tone for the rest of it, though. XD
* although I watch so few movies in general, that this translates to "I keep intending to rent some more" rather than "I watch them all the time."
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I posted about this movie in MY journal awhile ago!
This is a HELLA good movie!!!!! (though maybe because of the cool action!)
I wish you had screen capped the part where the building has something like \"Hi, Speilburg, Let\'s do it together\" on it! I love the chase sceen there :D and ♪\"
KnifesKnives for sale! Knives for sale!\"♪I liked \"George\" but he had to go and die.... ;.;
And then the whole \"funny voice smoker guy\" and *SMACK*
I want to see \"Honor of The Beast\"!!!!!
Oh and the dubb that was on the DVD was actually pretty good ^_^ though they did dubb the fight club guy who said \"That\'s why Thai women come to America to be hookers\" even though he spockade in engrish....