Gutbrain Records

Wednesday, 19 October 2005

It's been years since I've enjoyed a martial-arts movie as much as I enjoyed Ong Bak. Actually, and it's not surprising, considering what Jackie Chan and Jet Li have been up to lately, it's been years since I've enjoyed a martial arts-movie. But Ong Bak, which stars Tony Jaa as the hick from the country who goes to the vice-ridden city and is frequently moved to demonstrate that he happens to be an unbeatable fighter (remember Bruce Lee in Return of the Dragon?), is really good.

Certain sequences had me thinking back fondly of Jackie Chan's best films — which of the Project A movies has that incredible street chase which involves hot peppers? Homage is paid to it in Ong Bak.

The plot? Don't worry, you've seen it before. It's been in movies for at least fifty years. The same plot drives John Frankenheimer's excellent The Train, for example. But it's probably been kicking around since the silent era, perhaps even since popular fiction of centuries before that.

The filmmakers wisely didn't let too much plot get in the way of the story, as Joe Bob Briggs would say. The story in this case is about how elbows and knees can be used like fists.

One odd thing about the DVD of Ong Bak that I saw was that, as far as I could tell, you couldn't watch it with English subtitles without also getting English captions, such as "[Screaming]", "[Screaming and Groaning]", "[Grunting]", "[Screaming Continues]". I found this kind of annoying, though there were a few times when it was amusing, such as "[Inhaling Deeply]", which accompanied a scene of a villain snorting lines of coke. My favorite, though, was "[Inaudible]". Oh, thanks for telling me.