Ong Bak 2 (2007)

Starring: Tony Jaa, Dan Chupong, Saranyu Wongkrachang, Nirut Sirichanya, Santisuk Promsiri

Director: Tony Jaa, Panna Rittikrai

Action Director: Tony Jaa

Strangely enough, it wasn’t until about a month ago (re: October 2010) that I watched any movie starring Tony Jaa in its entirety. Oh sure, I cheated and watched some of the fight scenes from Ong Bak and Tom Yung Goong on Youtube, but I hadn’t watched any of them in their entirety. This will strike you all as being quite strange, considering that I have an entire website devoted to reviewing martial arts films and, considering how popular Thai cinema became in the wake of Ong Bak, you’d figure that I’d at least have watched that. But no, I didn’t, for reasons that are still unclear even to me.

It was last month that I finally put my foot down and said, “Gosh darn it! I need to watch some Tony Jaa films and fill in this void in my life.” So I rented Ong Bak one evening and watched it. Jolly good film. Not much of a plot, mind you, but that seems to be a recurring theme in these Thai martial arts films. The stunts and fighting were superb though, even if the action direction on the whole left a little to be desired.

So the week after I rented this film, followed two weeks after by Ong Bak 3. I will get around to renting Tom Yung Goong (aka The Protector) eventually, although I have a bunch of other films that I need to cross off my list before I get to it. In good time, though. In good time. I’m almost up to date on my Thai action cinema. I still need to watch Jeeja Yanin’s Raging Phoenix, Fireball, and Dynamite Warrior, among others. I also feel the need to watch Merantau (an Indonesian post-Ong Bak martial arts film) and The Rebel (a Vietnamese post-Ong Bak martial arts film), but that’s neither here nor there…or is it? No.

But let’s talk about Ong Bak 2. There’s not a whole lot to say about the plot, because it comes pretty close to not existing. We’re talking about Drunken Master level of plotting here—I once tried to explain the plot of Drunken Master to a friend; after stuttering for a few seconds, he finished my sentence for me and said, “It had none.” But plotless kung fu movies have never kept me from writing a review, so let’s go forward…again.

Basically, at the end of the 15^th century in Thailand, some evil general guy is planning a coup against the king…or something. A soldier carrying a boy is killed by the general’s men and the boy goes into hiding. He’s found by a group of slave traders and flung into a pit to do battle with a member of the crocodilian family (I wasn’t paying attention as to whether it was an alligator, a crocodile, or a caiman). He’s saved by a clan of bandits who take him in and train him in the martial arts. He tries to kill the evil general guy, who was responsible for his parents’ death, but fails to assassinate him and is eventually captured and sentenced to be tortured. There you go. That’s the entire plot in one paragraph.

The thing is, as thin is the plot is, that the plot of the film is horribly underdeveloped. Basically, we’re treated to two types of scenes in this movie: fights and flashbacks. We get a lot of scenes of Tony Jaa’s character, Tien, as a child learning how to dance. Then as an adult he beats people into oblivion. But that’s about it. Oh sure, some interaction happens in between those scenes…no, I take that back. There’s practically no interaction whatsoever over the course of this film. There are lines that the actors speak, yes. But there’s no dialogue. One actor talks while the other actor just stands there, staring back in a brooding manner. You’d think that after critics pointed out the plot and characterization deficiencies in Ong Bak and Tom Yung Goong, the people here would at least try to improve things. But no. Heck, as thin as the plots to his films have been in the past, at least Jackie Chan played enjoyable people that interacted with his supporting players in amusing ways.

That basically leaves us with two things: the film’s production values and the fighting. Let’s talk about the former. The film looks really good. I enjoyed the historic jungle setting of this film—it’s a nice break from the historic Chinese cities, Chinese deserts, and grimy Bangkok back alleys seen in other films. The cinematography is rock solid, although the stylish photography during the big dancing sequence was unnecessary and said sequence ran on far too long.

Ultimately, it’s the fighting that’s going to make or break this film. I’m happy to report that, in a lot of ways, the fighting represents a huge improvement over that of Ong Bak. First of all, the choreography is a lot better. The characters have actually exchanges of blocks, blows, punches, ducks, jumps, etc. It’s a lot more intricate than the fighting seen in Born to Fight and Ong Bak, which was made up of almost entirely “money moves”. Second, the excess of slow motion and stunts/kicks shown from three different angles that made up Ong Bak’s action has been curtailed, thankfully. Oh sure, we get some slow motion here and there, but not to the point where it got old like in the previous film.

We also get a lot of variety here. The bandit army is made up of fighters from a number of different nationalities including Japan (a samurai), China (a kung fu master), and Africa (a grappler). Tony Jaa’s character learns not only their styles, but also Muay Thai and a variety of weapons as well, including the rope-dart (woo-hoo!) and the three-section staff. Heck, we even get a sequence (a superfluous one at that) where Tony Jaa decimates the gang of slave traders with drunken boxing! There are two downsides to this. First of all, it’s never explained why there are so many Chinese and Japanese warriors wandering around 15^th century Thailand, let alone African and Indian warriors. Moreover, I could’ve sworn that I saw some Chinese soldiers wearing Manchu attire, characteristic of the Qing dynasty. Unfortunately, the movie is set during what would’ve been the Ming Dynasty, so you lose points for anachronisms, fellas.

The other downside is a bit more problematic, depending on who you talk to. My colleague Dave Thomas already discussed this in his review, but I’ll open it up again for discussion: When Tony Jaa fought in Ong Bak and Tom Yung Goong, what he did was special because he was doing what Jackie Chan wasn’t able to do anymore because of his age, not to mention the type of awesome over-the-top moves that only Donnie Yen was really capable of doing, at least in Hong Kong. So you had this mixture of awesome, over-the-top stunts and crazy aerial kicks and Muay Thai moves. It was great.

Here, other than a sequence in which Jaa runs on top of a herd of elephants, the stunts were toned down quite a bit, putting the emphasis on the fighting. However, when Jaa was focusing on Muay Thai, he had practically no equal: Ken Low and Billy Chow were already over the hill; Van Damme had never reached that level of awesomeness; etc. So that helped set the man apart even further than his stuntwork.

However, since he opts for a more varied style, it ends up being something of a two-edged sword for Jaa. One hand, it’s a testament to the actor’s versatility to see him using kendo, kung fu, and grappling in his fight scenes. It certainly makes up for the monotony of some of the fights in the first film. On the other hand, when you switch to other styles, you invite yourself to comparison with those who fight with those styles more naturally. In that respect, Tony Jaa doesn’t really compare. We’ve seen better Japanese swordplay from Yasuaki Kurata. We’ve seen better kung fu from the likes of Gordon Liu, Jet Li, Sammo Hung, etc. We’ve seen better drunken boxing from Jackie Chan. So there’s something of a trade off in this film in the action department: the first film had a wonderful physical performance from Jaa but monotonous choreography and sloppy action direction. Here the choreography and action direction are miles ahead of the first film, but as Dave Thomas said, any competent martial artist could’ve performed the fight scenes in this film.

To sum things up, Ong Bak 2 is an intriguing and good-looking period action film with some solid action set pieces, but is ultimately hampered by nonexistent characterizations, a plot that is very thin (even by genre standards), and the lack of the action excesses that made Jaa’s first two films so impressive. Fight fans should not miss this film, though.

Score: 3.5 out of 5 animals