December 29, 2005

In the soup …

We had seen Prachya Pinkaew’s "Ong-bak" a while back and really liked it. It had really bad sub-titles but then again it was a Thai movie and they may have language issues getting the translations done. The sub-titles still manage to convey the basic meaning and there was a good story, very good action and a really funny trishaw chase scene that Laurie still talks about 🙂 It was a very natural kind of movie and as the tagline for the movie states, "No stunt doubles, no computer images, no strings attached". Plus, Prachya Pinkaew seems to have a bit of Steven Spielberg hang-up and I like that too 🙂

So, when we saw Prachya Pinkaew’s second movie "Tom yum goong", we picked it up immediately. We watched it yesterday and this was a far cry from "Ong-bak" 🙁 This movie had hardly any story and seemed to be simply an adrenalin-pumping action flick which just kept pouring more and more of the action on. This one had very poor sub-titles as well but then again, you don’t really need sub-titles to translate the sound of breaking bones :p That’s what most of the movie consisted of – not much talk but lot of breaking arms, legs, ribs, heads and any other bone out of the 206 in the human body. The language was also mostly really bad English and probably Chinese and so they had Thai sub-titles which totally covered the English sub-titles :p

The action was over the top, and as I mentioned before, non-stop. There is one scene where Tony Jaa beats up black-suited guys who keep coming at him non-stop. When he’s done, the whole room is littered with bodies. Very reminiscent of a similar scene in "Kill Bill" where the Bride leaves a room littered with ninja warriors or something. Then there was the final fight that Tony Jaa’s character has with what I like to call "Blondie and the Steroid Triplets". It’s funny in a way. You have these four huge, muscle bound wrestler types going against this tiny Thai guy. They even throw a baby elephant through a glass-window, I kid you not. And then Tony Jaa straps on a pair of elephant bones to his arms and (literally) hamstrings them :p

Yeah, that’s not the whole story. But if you expect a story, there isn’t much. But if you just want to enjoy some really good martial arts moves and aren’t turned off by the sight of bones being broken and arms pulled out of their sockets as if the bad guys were so many dolls that Tony Jaa’s playing with, by all means go ahead and watch the movie 🙂

Tags: Entertainment, Movies
Posted by Fahim at 7:34 am   Comments (1)

One Response to In the soup …

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Laurie 29 December 2005 at 8:12 am

And the violence got worse and worse as the movie carried on. By the time it reached the final 15 minutes or so of the movie, there was no story left to tell other than the resolution, so with the breaking of bones and other forms of destruction… I just stopped watching. And didn’t miss a thing.

Guess I don’t like death and destruction and violent action as much as Fahim. :p

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