Ong Bak: Le guerrier

Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior more than exceeded my expectations. I have been waiting for nearly a year since I first heard of it to actually see it and it did not let me down. Although the movie started a bit slow, after about half an hour, things began to pick up and the movie never looked back.

Ong-Bak is about a small town villager named Ting (Tony Jaa), who sets out to find the head of his beloved sacred statue, which was stolen. Ting finds his long lost cousin from the village, Humlae (Perttary Wongkamlao), who at first claims to not know Ting until he sees that his village did not send him alone, but with a bag of cash to use as he sees necessary to get the statue head back. This is our first real look at Tony Jaa's talents, as the first chase scene begins after Humlae takes off with the bag on his motorcycle. Amazingly, Ting follows Humlae all the way to a pit fighter type of place where the real action begins.

Although the plot is pretty thin, it is more than made up for by Jaa's entertaining and seemingly impossible stunts. The movie plays up the stunts big, as it claims no stunt-men, no wires, no CGI, etc. With all that in mind, this movie is pretty mind boggling. Comparisons to Jackie Chan are going to be inevitable, and not undeserving. I can only imagine what the two of them could have accomplished if they did a movie together while Chan was younger. Simply amazing. 8/10