![]() Jaa wrote the story, co-directed the film and directed the action scenes, so this is his baby and he fills it with impressive set pieces that show off his range of fighting styles (at one point he resorts to drunken fighting, for no good reason other than it looks cool) and action stunts (and even acrobatic dancing see Tien, those lessons paid off after all) without demanding he do more than look haunted by his unresolved past. The minions keep coming, day and night, and he goes through a small army by the end, at one point helped by the elephant he befriended as a boy. After an energetic training montage, the kid grows up into the emotionally impenetrable Tony Jaa, shows off a greatest hits of old Jackie Chan moves and then goes on to take his revenge on the man who murdered his warrior father, one epic battle at a time. This is a simple revenge story loaded up with far more exposition than necessary: young Tien survives the betrayal that leaves his father murdered, gets tossed into a crocodile pit by nasty child slavers and is adopted by Chernang, the King of the Outlaws (Sorapong Chatree) after he proves himself by dispatching the creature. It owes more to Apocalypto than the original Ong-Bak and is slicker and more technically accomplished than any Thai action film I’ve seen, but it comes at the expense of the down-and-dirty filmmaking that made the first Ong Bak so impressive: you didn’t just see every stunt executed by Jaa in straight-on, unbroken shots, you saw them replayed a couple of times from other angles to show just how damnably impressive it really was. ![]() ![]() Set some 500 years ago in 15 th Century Thailand, this revenge thriller stirs up almost non-stop action with a swirl of flashbacks, a full complement of slow-motion and strobing skip-frame action, and Hollywood-style camerawork and rapid-fire editing. Ong-Bak 2: The Beginning (Thailand, 2008) is a prequel in name only to Ong-Bak (2003), sharing only the title and star Tony Jaa from the original international martial arts hit from Thailand. ![]()
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