Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior

Martial ballet: The organic stunts of Ong-Bak make it all the more enthralling

By Mike Prevatt

American audiences have marveled at the martial arts offerings of movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero and House of Flying Daggers, not just for their unique and arty action sequences but their impressively arranged fight scenes. Well, hate to break it to you new converts, but those stylized square-offs are just that--a Hong Kong-gone-Hollywood approach to mano y mano combat digitally manipulated for additional wow effect.

You might think the same thing while watching Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior, Thailand's first major cinematic breakthrough, because the various body blows, freefalls and fighter acrobatics are so visceral and minimally edited, you can't imagine camera trickery or computers faking shit like this. That's because it's real, which makes this foreign sleeper even more enthralling.

Ting (Tony Jaa), an orphaned villager taught muay thai by monks and warned never to use it for fighting, is chosen to retrieve a severed Buddha head so rain will return to the village. However, once he arrives in Bangkok, where the thief resides, he's thrust into the city's underworld and forced to spar in fight clubs so his onetime village mate George (Petchtai Wongkamlao), a compulsive gambler interested in profiting off Ting's victories, will help him on his mission.

Naturally, this is a storyline that enables director Prachya Pinkaew to maximize the number of money-shot action sequences and distract the watcher from MIA elements such as character development and nuanced dialogue. But even after the umpteenth flying elbow shot or body quite audibly hitting the ground, you still can't get enough of the film's wondrous balance of violence and realism, or its expert pacing and choreography, or the martial ballet of newcomer Tony Jaa.

The action movie is the least organic film medium, but Ong-Bak breathtakingly reverses that notion.