A good movie

Recently, they released ‘The Raid: Redemption’, it became quickly a huge cult classic and it was hailed as the best action flick of the last 10 years. To be honest, I haven’t seen it yet and, somehow, I’m rather skeptical and the fact that Roger Ebert didn’t like the movie at all doesn’t help either. Anyway, 10 years before ‘The Raid: Redemption’, another movie was produced and was also called the next best thing in the martial-arts movie genre and, in the contrary of ‘The Raid: Redemption’ , I did watch it. Eventually, I thought that ‘Ong-Bak' was indeed pretty impressive but, to be honest, the story was nothing really mind-blowing. Of course, the action die-hard fans would argue that it doesn’t matter, that it is only about watching some bad-ass fight scenes but I don’t agree. Action scenes are way more compelling when they are inserted into a really good story (see for example ‘The Bourne Identity’). Here, you have the very old tale of the master killer fighter who of course doesn’t want to fight (such an old and boring gimmick…) but, obviously, he will have to fight at some point and, in the mean time, the audience is getting bored senseless. Still, when Tony Jaa finally gets going and kicks some ass, it was pretty damned impressive. Indeed, without any special effects, CGI or wires, the guy displays some of the most amazing fighting skills I have ever seen. To conclude, I’m not sure if it is really a masterpiece, the story is just too weak, but if only for the fighting scenes, it is definitely worth a look.

7/10