Tony Jaa is bak! Ben Johnson looks at Tony Jaa’s follow-up to Ong-Bak, now out on DVD, and explains why the Muay Thai fighter is cinema’s latest, and greatest, martial arts superstar.
Distributor: Contender Entertainment Group (2 Disc) Format: Region 2 PAL Length: 109 min. Aspect Ratio: Widescreen (2.35:1) Audio: Thai Subtitles: English Extras: Scene selection; Further attractions; On The Press Trail with Tony Jaa; Interview gallery - Tony Jaa, Petchtai Wongkamlao, Bongkoj Khongmalai, director Prachya Pinkaew, and stunt co-ordinator Panna Rittikra; Revolution Uprising - Pre-production action; A Different Line - Multi-angle sequence; Making the Warrior - Cast and crew interviews; Trailers Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Year of Release: 2005; Origin: Thailand; Studio: Sahamongkolfilm Co., Baa-Ram-Ewe, Golden Network Asia, TF1 International
Director: Prachya Pinkaew; Producer: Prachya Pinkaew, Sukanya Vongsthapat; Script: Napalee, Piyaros Thongdee, Joe Wannapin, Kongdej Jaturanrasamee; Action Director: Tony Jaa; Cast: Tony Jaa, Petchtai Wongkamlao, Bongkoj Khongmalai, Xing Jing, Nathan Jones, Johnny Nguyen.
Alternative Titles: Tom Yum Goong, Ong Bak 2, The Protector, Honour of the Dragon
Trailer: Click below to view the trailer for Warrior King.
Plot Synopsis
In a retread of his breakthrough role in Ong-Bak, Tony Jaa jets off to Australia in hope of saving his pet elephant, snatched from his Thai village by nasty Chinese poachers and gamblers who haven’t got a clue what’s coming to them.
Review
With Warrior King, Tony Jaa successfully solidifies his standing as the world’s next great action superstar, as if 2003’s Ong-Bak hadn’t already proven this. On this occasion, his elbows and knees fly into the face of the Western money market with a Thai film spoken mostly in broken English coupled with an imperative inclusion of Chinese villainy just to satisfy the world’s fifth largest economy. It’s a propaganda piece in sentiment, but at least it goes slightly further than Ong-Bak in portraying Thai people as not just solely known for kickboxing and gambling. Here, Thai people are registered as slightly more peaceful, spiritual and enlightened, which leaves Tony to beat up the rest of the world. That’s fine by us, because it’s done with such brilliant flamboyancy and bone-breaking accuracy. Just like Ong-Bak, Warrior King has an injury rate set to overdrive.
Like Ong-Bak, where Jaa leaves his village to recover the stolen head of a prized Buddhist statue, here Jaa is forced to leave his village to recover a kidnapped elephant, Thailand’s most sacred creature, and Tony’s best friend, given by how much larking about they get up to at the movie’s start. The elephant is poached by some Chinese Mafioso, headed by a sultry but slightly barking mistress, and shipped off to Australia, where Tony falls into contact with the same goofy chap from Ong-Bak who repeats his role as a brainless, if accidentally charming, police officer. He runs into a Jackie Chan look-alike upon landing down under, and things get a lot stranger. Gangs chase him around the busy Melbourne streets after his investigations come a cropper, and we are greeted with a second take of that brilliant slapstick chase scene from Ong-Bak in which Jaa similarly evades capture by sliding into the splits and leaping over giant walls, usually with a somersault.
The film has two really great standout scenes, both of them visceral and dependent entirely on Tony Jaa’s elite athleticism and powerful screen presence. When he finds the criminal lair, he kicks open the doors like Bruce Lee on heat and snarls viscously with both hands clenched, slowly starting to escalate the building’s many storeys. A steadicam stays locked to him in a scene that must surpass four or five minutes of non-stop, non-edited screen time, as Jaa makes his way up the stairs stopping only to administer a relentless barrage of pain upon those who fall within his reach. Stuntmen are thrashed, kicked, pummelled and generally Muay Thai’d until they can take no more in possibly one of modern action cinema’s most accomplished, realistic and breath-taking fight scenes since that scene with the hammer in Old Boy.
That is until Jaa gets really mad after discovering the bones of his sacred animal, screaming the eternal words ‘You killed my elephant!’ as a succession of fighters crawl from nowhere to test drive Jaa’s new acrobatics. A Capoeria fighter makes for a fiery confrontation, as does the beefy Nathan Jones who gives Jaa a Herculean struggle only to suffer a similar fate to everyone else who thinks of starting some nonsense with the Thai fighter. Jaa is pretty much superhuman, an unstoppable force of fury, and the physical representation of both Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan combined. His violent side is adequately explored in another five minutes of wild chopsocky where Madame Rose’s best men receive a various concoction of broken bones as Tony displays a succession of arm locks and take downs that could have Jet Li quaking in his boots.
Jaa has certainly elevated Thai cinema into something nobody really expected with both Ong-Bak and this film, its meaty follow-up, and with such a crazed media following it would not surprise me if Jaa soon supplies Hollywood with a sample of his Muay Thai thrashings. Time will tell if Jaa can make the leap into more credible storylines and acting that relies not just on his hands and feet. Having said that, this film is pretty much the most exciting thing you’re likely to see in a long time, and I advise everybody to discover Tony Jaa as if your life depended on it, that is if you haven’t already.
Tony Jaa is bak! Ben Johnson looks at Tony Jaa’s follow-up to Ong-Bak, now out on DVD, and explains why the Muay Thai fighter is cinema’s latest, and greatest, martial arts superstar. 
With Warrior King, Tony Jaa successfully solidifies his standing as the world’s next great action superstar, as if 2003’s Ong-Bak hadn’t already proven this. On this occasion, his elbows and knees fly into the face of the Western money market with a Thai film spoken mostly in broken English coupled with an imperative inclusion of Chinese villainy just to satisfy the world’s fifth largest economy. It’s a propaganda piece in sentiment, but at least it goes slightly further than Ong-Bak in portraying Thai people as not just solely known for kickboxing and gambling. Here, Thai people are registered as slightly more peaceful, spiritual and enlightened, which leaves Tony to beat up the rest of the world. That’s fine by us, because it’s done with such brilliant flamboyancy and bone-breaking accuracy. Just like Ong-Bak, Warrior King has an injury rate set to overdrive. 
That is until Jaa gets really mad after discovering the bones of his sacred animal, screaming the eternal words ‘You killed my elephant!’ as a succession of fighters crawl from nowhere to test drive Jaa’s new acrobatics. A Capoeria fighter makes for a fiery confrontation, as does the beefy Nathan Jones who gives Jaa a Herculean struggle only to suffer a similar fate to everyone else who thinks of starting some nonsense with the Thai fighter. Jaa is pretty much superhuman, an unstoppable force of fury, and the physical representation of both Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan combined. His violent side is adequately explored in another five minutes of wild chopsocky where Madame Rose’s best men receive a various concoction of broken bones as Tony displays a succession of arm locks and take downs that could have Jet Li quaking in his boots. 
(0 vote)
