I watched this movie, and it is a lot of fun.
You could easily switch out the bland-ass title and replace it with You Stole Tony Jaa's Elephant and Now You're Fucked.
A bunch of bad guys go into the deepest forest in Thailand and steal an elephant that is purported to have magical powers - the owner is invincible in battle, which will (presumably) help them take over the criminal underworld.
But this is like a King Kong story, a mummy story, where someone goes into the wilderness and takes something they shouldn't have, and the inconguence of ancient/wilderness with modern/city causes serious trouble for everyone concerned. Because these magic elephants are guarded by an ancient cabal of muay thai fighters. Tony Jaa is the last of their line, and he comes a-lookin' for his fucking elephant.
The first act is all about the Thai relationship with elephants. There are lots of scenes of Tony growing up with the elephants, playing with them, practicing muay thai with them, etc. There's some implied elephant sex - a male grabs a female by the trunk and leads her into the woods, and a dissolve cut shows us a baby elephant running out of the forest. When the bad guys show up, the elephants lose their shit and go on an extended rampage. I can't tell you how much joy I derived from watching elephants wreck a village.
Despite the rampagin', the bad guys manage to get the elephant to Australia, thereby enacting the Curse of Tony Jaa. He comes out of his temple and heads for the modern world, on a mission to retrieve said elephant and fix some serious wagon. He doesn't know the language and, like Kee-Rock, is confused and frightened by our modern ways. But, luckily for both Tony and the viewer, he is able to overcome his fish-out-of-water problems with violence.
And this is where the rubber hits the road. In film development, you learn that every scene has its own logline, encapsulating what the scene is about and how it pertains to the overall story. You could say about 50% of the scenes in this movie have the logline of: "Bad guys are hanging around being evil, when Tony Jaa flies into frame and knees everyone in the face."
It is a simple story, which is best. You don't watch martial arts movies for their intricate plotting. This ain't The Usual Suspects. This is about watching some dude beat ass in cool ways.
There are three highlights to this movie:
a) A fight in a burning church, with Tony Jaa versus a capoeira master. Both styles are very acrobatic, so they're spinning around, doing springs and jumps, throwing kicks and strikes from weird directions. Good times.
b) Tony tracks the bad guys to a hotel. It's the kind that's open-air, so you could lean over the railing on the tenth floor and see the lobby below, if you get my drift. He fights his way all the way up ten stories... in one fucking shot. This thing is a symphony of stuntwork. It's a masterpiece. If you need one reason to see the movie, this scene is it.
c) Tony Jaa versus about fifty guys. One after the other, he breaks their bones in novel and mysterious ways. No one bonebreaking is the same as the rest, like each bad guy is a special little snow flake who gets his shit ruined in a unique way. It's almost like watching an instructional video entitled How to Break Bones the Tony Jaa Way. It's not all in one shot, but it is pretty long. You're watching Tony bust bones for a while.
If you like seeing knees to the face, bones broken, amazing fights all in one take and elephants, I cannot recommend this movie more. If you don't like the aforementioned elements, then you're probably gonna be too busy watching He's Just Not That Into You to catch this, anyway.
Also: over the weekend, I went to go see My Bloody Valentine. It has the same simple pleasures as The Protector. Meaning: if you think you might be entertained by watching a dude in a miner outfit kill people with a pick-axe in 3-D a lot - and by "a lot," I mean a couple dozen times - this is a movie you'll enjoy. Luckily, I fall into that category, so fun was had... and savored.
Now it's just a matter of waiting for Friday the 13th.
No comments:
Post a Comment