Hey folks, Harry here... From time to time, I love to alter the lives of people thousands of miles away... After getting my first review of ZATOICHI tonight, I saw at the bottom of the review, that the unnamed reviewer was mentioning that he was planning on seeing ONG BAK MUAY THAI WARRIOR last night, as the midnight film. Knowing that Copernicus was en route to attempt attendance to THE HUMAN STAIN - where he would have to wait in the stand by line, I knew he wouldn't have time to run from that theater after the film to get in line for ONG BAK and get in... Time for intervention... let's see how it went...
So I’m driving to go see THE HUMAN STAIN and I get a call from Head Geek on the cell phone. I tell him I figure I’ll check that out and if I have time head over to the midnight movie, ONG-BAK, MUAY THAI WARRIOR. He is screaming in my ear, -“There’s no time! You’ll never make it.” Harry has consulted a map or has some kind of godlike powers of foresight from his control room back in Austin. “Drop everything and do anything to see ONG-BAK! You must see it.”
“So you think it will be good?”
“It will cleave your ass in half.”
Say no more, brother. I must see it.
So I did, and Sweet Jesus Almighty! (And I’m an atheist!) This was one of the best film experiences of my life. We are talking religious here. That movie turned an entire audience into screaming primates. People were gasping, screaming, crying “No!” and “Oh my God!” over and over. You just heard this constantly from people, instinctually screaming out from some primal monkey circuit in their brain. One person said to me after the movie that halfway through the film she realized her mouth was hanging open. Mine was too. I cried more than I ever have in a movie – and that was from the constant laughter, all the way to the point of eye watering, at the sheer impossibility of the stunts. That and sheer glee. We are talking ridiculous stunts here. Ludicrous. Almost all of the stunts were done without wires or CG, and there really aren’t words to describe them – you must see them for yourself. I won’t even try, or spoil anything.
If there is one of those secret (they do it at noon before everybody
gets there) Academy Awards for best stunt work, it is automatically
going to the star of this movie, Panom Yeerum. They don’t even need
to nominate anyone else – it would just embarrass them. Hell they
might as well go ahead and give him a lifetime achievement award for
just this, his first movie. Fuck that, they should institute a Nobel
Prize for stunt work and just give it to him.
I honestly cannot write a clear-headed review of this movie right now because I am just geeking out. After the movie, the director, Prachya Pinkaew, got a standing ovation. And even though it was 3 in the morning, people just hung around buzzing about it. People wanted their ticket stubs signed by the director. They were walking up to him and thanking him for such a great movie. He even had his picture made with big and small groups of fans. You just can’t beat the whole thing for a perfect film experience.
Another strength of the film is that it is the first to feature the Thai martial art Muay Thai. It is a flurry of leaps, elbows, and knees. It is beautiful, but probably the most brutal martial art you’ve ever seen. And there are plenty of slow motion shots of the punches actually connecting, sometimes shown two or three times consecutively from different angles.
The plot, of course, is nothing more than a skeleton to hang the stunts on. And for that reason the plot development at the beginning of the movie could be tightened up a bit. The lead doesn’t act much, but who cares. Where this movie shines is in the stupefying stunt work. And it does it better than any movie I have ever seen. Jackie Chan and Jet Li move over, a new kung-fu master has seized the throne.
I believe this movie is available on VCD in Thailand, but don’t see it that way! You must see it in a theater, with a gasping, cheering audience. You won’t regret it.
--Copernicus
