An average movie

A few years back, there was a pretty good buzz about ‘Ong Bak’ which was apparently a rather brutal and impressive martial arts feature and I was definitely eager to check it out. Eventually, one of my colleagues had the DVD, so I ended up watching it and I was pleasantly surprised. The very same colleague had also this other flick starring Tony Jaa and I thought it would be another treat but, honestly, I thought it was fairly disappointing. I mean, of course, the fighting scenes were pretty awesome but the story was seriously underwhelming, even more than with ‘Ong Bak’. Indeed, in Tony Jaa’s breakthrough feature, the story was pretty generic and pedestrian but, at least, it was entertaining. This time, they built up this boring story around some elephants and I really had a hard time to care about the whole thing. Eventually, it is rather surprising that Tony Jaa didn’t do more movies afterwards (he has made only a little more than 5 movies after ‘Ong Bak’) but apparently, he will make his American debut next year in ‘Fast & Furious 7’ so who knows? It might be the start of a new international career (on the other hand, the guy is almost 40 years old so I’m not sure how long he will manage to physically pull it out his impressive acrobatic stunts. Such a shame that he was discovered so late). Anyway, to conclude, even though I thought it was slightly disappointing, it still remains a decent martial arts feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

6/10