Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Awesome Movie

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The Jaturungkabart once were protectors of Thailand's revered Royal war elephants. Kham (Tony Jaa) is from a long line of protectors. He grew up with great elephant Por Yai and his calf Kohrn. Elephants are taken by poachers with the help of corrupt officials. Kham goes to Sydney to confront Vietnamese gangster Johnny to avenge his father and save his elephants.It's got action, real stunts, Tony Jaa and explosive destruction. The acting is B-level. I don't expect Tony Jaa to be an extraordinary actor and he has good charisma for a stuntman. It's his action that speaks louder. I like policeman Mark but the rest aren't that special. The comedy ranges from cute to cheesy. On that note, there is a Jackie Chan impersonator. For that to truly work, the movie needs the real Jackie Chan who would nail the comic handoff of that scene. The story is functional but this is an excuse to see action stunts. Although Jackie would have done it with better humor.

(aka Tom-Yum-Goong, The Warrior King, Thai Dragon, Revenge of the Warrior)A much hyped fight film from Muay Thai expert Tony Jaa with many many excellent stunts and chase sequences. The only problem is we have now seen all this before from various other martial arts experts.The film itself is fine but its not really too original in any aspect, a simple revenge plot as usual and Jaa showing his skills yet again. Its very spectacular but I personally didn't get too engrossed. The most impressive thing about the whole film is the MMA fight sequences (the basic reason for this movies existence), mainly the fight between Jaa and Capoeira fighter Lateef Crowder.This one fight sequence is the most impressive fight I've seen in years, its fantastic, Crowder is amazing and almost too good to be true with his moves. Add to this the following fight between Wushu expert John Foo and then a one off battle against wrestling strong man Nathan Jones which is impressive merely to see the size differences, think Bruce Lee v Kareem Abdul Jabbar.To be honest the film is worth seeing for those three fights, apart from that its business as usual with this action film.7/10

This is a bad movie. Throughout the whole movie I kept cringing at every time there was a cut in a scene, for some reason the cuts look so jarringly bad. Probably because the scenes are so poorly written or because the director doesn't know how to shoot anything except for fight sequences and even that he manages to mess up, but I'll get to that later. On top of that Tony Jaa, or any of the actors for that matter, has no screen presence, every single one of his acting scenes comes off as awkwardly reading lines. To add to the suffering none of the lines have any depth, they're all saying what they're expected to say and saying exactly what they feel. The only time that we are relieved of this painful experience is when the fight sequences save the movie from being a complete disaster. The fight sequences in this movie, like in many other more modern martial arts films, seem to be more Americanized and have become very quick and brutal action. What I mean by that is that they still employ the martial arts aspect or style, but the fights are becoming more and more like fight sequences in the Rocky franchise, where the opponents punch each other like punching bags until one gives out. This is a change in modern martial arts films that I am not liking, I liked the older films because it was almost like a game of chess. In the older movies the fights were a series of exchanges between the fighters, usually lasting in punch, block, counter, punch, etc. and then finally one of the fighters lands a blow. It seems more skillful that way and even more suspenseful, both fighters seem to be evenly matched, they are thinking and out thinking the opponent, countering then countering some more until one of them slips and bang, the fighter took advantage of the slip up. It's almost like a war, where every exchange between the opponents is a battle, the fight is very undecided and very back and forth until the hero hopefully defeats his opponent, thus winning the war. These newer martial arts films seem to be more like a game of checkers, bang bang bang, very little set up and a lot of action. Part of the mysticism of the martial arts genre is how the fighters keep calm under a fight and don't break out of their stance and just start brawling, that probably has to do with the fact that martial arts is a discipline, this aspect seems to carry over to the genre and make the fights look like a dance (something pretty). That's not to say that there aren't one sided ass kickings in the older films, but that's only to imply dominance or mastery of martial arts. The point I'm trying to make is that none of the fight sequences here are pretty, from a visual, or choreographed point of view, they seem like a Transformers fight sequence but with people. Another thing I disliked in this film was how some of the cuts were made during a fight sequence. I remember one where Tony Jaa does a flip to kick the opponent and the camera cuts to a different angle where Jaa is in mid air then lands the kick. I'm here thinking "why did he cut?" and it's because Jaa couldn't land that kick for safety reason, so they cut to one where he did land it. Now I don't have a problem with taking safety measures but if a cut is going to take me out of the action sequence like that then find another way to film it or don't do that particular kick if it's too elaborate or complicated. You've already wowed most of your audience with some of the other stuff in the fight, you're doing too much at that point, take it out and find something else, something more creative. Anyhow, the story in this film is pretty weak. There's a MacGuffin elephant, Jaa has to save it, and puts him on course for all the action. Nonetheless, this has it's fan base, people looking for punches and kicks to the face and all other areas, but this just isn't for me, as a martial arts fan or as someone looking for story.

First off I unlike most people enjoy the revenge plot with kung fu movies. But this movie was worse than the new Godzilla movies in production. Usually kung fu flicks are fluid, but this one is like a rip off of the third sequel to Transporter or Rumble in the Bronx.It was bad on an unbelievable level. The plot wholes are unforgivable.It's not always just about kung fu like I said. I do enjoy entire movies.On a good note I got laid during it. So I guess it's a good date movie! But really guys if you want a good kung fu movie watch 36 Chambers of the Shaolin, Fist of Legend, Fearless, The Street Fighter, Fist of Fury, Police Story or Ong Bak 1 or 2.This one will disappoint. It's confusing why its not the watch now on netflix and the Ong Baks are on there. I look forward to the next Ong Bak. But this was so bad i turned it off eventually. Movies should get better not worse.