Director Prachya Pinkaew and stars Tony Jaa and Phetthai Wongkhamlao reunite for what is effectively a slicker remake of Ong-Bak, but a lot less fun…
Kham (Tony Jaa) lives an idyllic life with his father following an ancient tradition as carers and guardians to a pair of elephants (and their offspring). This peace is shattered when the elephants are stolen at fair and shipped out to Australia, his father left injured.
When Kham follows the trail to Sydney, he finds himself up against the mafia, led by lady boy Madame Rose (Jin Xing) and corrupt police official Vincent (Damian De Montemas). Teaming up with disgraced cop (Phetthai Wongkhamlao, Jaa’s co-star from Ong-Bak) and Pla (Bongkod Kongmalai), a Thai prostitute on the run from the Mafia, the trail soon leads to a backroom in the Tom Yum Goong restaurant, where exotic animals are on the menu to those willing to pay the price. (Ironically life imitated art, as the news story about the Thai Zoo with a restaurant shipping exotic animals in for their VIP menu appeared several months after the film originally premiered!)
All is set for one hell of a showdown - can Kham bring Madame Rose and, erm, his cronies to justice, and finally liberate his elephants?
You can imagine the voice over, ‘First that took his sacred Buddha head, now they’ve taken his beloved elephant - don’t they ever learn?’ It might be better produced and more beautifully filmed, but essentially it’s a rerun of Ong-Bak. It’s a near duplicate plot, only this time jettisoning the ’small-town boy in a big city’ sub plot (though often replaced with cloying footage of Kham with the elephants).
Though it might have been the most hackneyed part of Ong-Bak, sadly it did also give Tony Jaa’s character some humanity. Without it Jaa is little more than a vengeance machine, much like Bruce Lee in Fist Of Fury. That may not tax Jaa’s acting ability, but gives us little to root for.
Relocating the action to Australia - presumably a move to help Jaa crossover into Western movies (as they tried with Jackie Chan) - brings with it the usual problem in Asian films of sub-standard Western actors. The main character of Vincent is played by an Aussie soap bit-player - even Hong Kong films manage to get leads of the calibre of Richard Roxburgh nowadays!
On the plus side the action - directed by Tony Jaa himself - is fantastic. The standout scene in the Tom Yunm Goong restaurant, where Jaa climbs the spiral stairs taking out henchmen on his way up, is a four-minute one-take shot with all the gravitas of Brian De Palma.
Other key scenes include Jaa fending off an ‘extreme sports’ gang (who could have dropped out of the film The Warriors) on skates, cycles and quad bikes, and taking out some 40 odd henchmen in the final scene, one by one. The action is superbly choreographed, greatly helped by Jaa’s happiness to take some real hard knocks during the making of the film (even if it can be all too obvious at times that he doesn’t deal them out). His energy is boundless, jumping up walls like a Gene Kelly of martial arts.
Yet his technique often lets him down, his style for broad, sweeping kicks and knee or elbow joint strikes is limited, quickly becoming repetitive. Elsewhere there are other misses. A boat chase that feels straight out of a Bond movie - and an old one at that. The final showdown with ‘Madame’ Rose is also disappointing, as it could have made much more out of his/her dual sexuality during the fight. Who can forget the scene in Beautiful Boxer, the obvious point of reference for the Rose character, when Asanee Suwan sending a mugger flying in high heels?
As with Ong-Bak the great set pieces are surrounded by weak attempts to set them up. Director Pinkaew just about gets away with it, but strangely the slickness and obvious bigger budget than the original movie makes you much less forgiving of the lack of a decent plot, flattening the originals charm for something that might as well be just another Western action movie. It also seems to have lost much of the energy from that film too.
Notably unlike Ong-Bak the film avoids straight stunts, combining them with fight sequences at every turn. A deliberate move perhaps, but one that will obviously effect the audience - especially considering the first movie appealed almost as much to women as it did to men
Warror King isn’t a bad action movie by any means, but all it’s slickness can’t save a another ham-fisted plot - it’s just not as thrilling as Ong-Bak. Though this film may have chalked up a fair amount of Box Office revenue, you can’t help but feel that’s just a knock on effect of it’s predecessors popularity. If Tony Jaa is really going to cross over to a Western audience he’s really going to have to work a bit harder…
DVD details
Distributor: Premier Asia (UK)
Great picture and sound quality from Premier Asia, but even with the featurettes and interviews you might wonder if there's really enough here to warrant a second disc?
