Film is Pwn

Ong Bak 2: The Beginning is a martial arts movie, and that is the film in a nutshell.  I’m tempted to conclude the blog there, but my natural loquaciousness demands that I press forward.

Ong Bak 2: The Beginning is currently in limited release in theaters, but I caught a sneak preview on HDNet movies. I had heard of the original Ong Bak and its star Tony Jaa, an exciting, imaginative, acrobatic heir to Jackie Chan without the clowning, which is kind of a turn-off for me, because who doesn’t love a good clown, right?

Ong Bak 2: The Beginning is basically a vehicle for Tony Jaa to turn 15th century China into his own personal playground, so he can do cool stuff like back flips into kicks off of an elephant (PETA could not be reached for comment).  The film is in Chinese with English subtitles, and with my ever-shrinking attention span that made picking up key plot details kind of touch-and-go for me, with no direct fault being attributed to the movie.  Since I do not possess the dedication to rewatch the film or even read an account on Wikipedia (the source of all knowledge), I will hereby attempt to rehash the plot from foggy memories:

Tony Jaa is Tien, the son of a nobleman of some sort, at least he’s the son until an evil warlord (is there any other kind?) kills Tien’s parents in front of Tien’s eyes.  The warlord actually doesn’t do the killing himself, being a capable leader, he delegates that to a black clad Samurai wearing a helmet that appears made of wicker.  The Wicker Man looks pretty fearsome, but it’s hard to be all that ominous when your helmet is mistaken for a trash can by the other henchmen.

Anyhoo, Tien is whisked away by a trusty servant, who is promptly killed, enabling Tien’s escape.  Sadly, Tien promptly gets picked up by slave-traders, and it doesn’t take long for poor ol’ Tien to get thrown to mud wrestle with hungry, hungry crocodiles for the amusement of his keepers.  Cue the best mud-wrestling match between a young protagonist and a crocodile this side of the controversial comic strip Archie Gets Eaten by A Crocodile.

Tien survives the crocodile fight just at the same time a band of rebels are conducting a raid, and said rebels take along the kid with them, because he’s got spunk, and raise him as one of their own.  Flash forward and Tien is taking the right of passage to manhood, which involves elephant wrangling, light jogging on top of rampaging elephants, and complicated dance routines with some of the towns most strange looking professional wrestlers.

Things go so swimmingly that Tien is promoted to Divisional Vice President of Raids and Marauding for the village.  Then we get raids, and much choreographed martial arts, which is what we all came to see.  Tien’s ambitions for his department are bigger than just besting the warlord’s henchmen in highly choreographed surprise ambushes, he wants to take down that darn Warlord, and find out who is the mysterious Wicker Man that killed his parents.  (Actually I don’t remember Tien bristling about Wicker Man’s secret identity, but since it turns out to be a surprise, I’m assuming the filmmakers wanted to imply that this was important.)

Tien sneaks into the evil warlord’s palace, and inexplicably joins in the evening’s entertainment dancing for the warlord and his minions with various servant girls, Tien donning a Gonzo mask because Muppets in this culture are revered as if they were gods.  I believe I spotted a statue to Fozzie the Bear in the background, but that could have been my imagination.

After Tien’s goofy, attempted assassination goes relatively well — everything except actually killing the warlord works out for him — he returns to his village to find that it’s been abandoned and he’s being ambushed by the mysterious Wicker Warrior and his cannon fodder friends.

What follows is a protracted, highly entertaining fight sequence that is worth checking out, even if you don’t bother to watch the rest of the film.  After twenty minutes of martial arts action culminating in the ultimate showdown between Tien and the Wicker Samurai, the movie just sort of ends.  There really isn’t a resolution as far as I could tell, but clearly I wasn’t paying full attention so maybe the hero killing his beloved friend who looks like an Asian Rollie Fingers who killed his parents and then the hero just kind of lays there in front of the rest of the Warlord’s minions, who frankly appeared about as confused as I am.

I imagine the director saying, “Cut!  That’s a wrap!” at that exact moment, and the cast going, “You almost got us, sir!  Really, what do we do now?”

Bottom line, Ong Bak 2: The Beginning is a martial arts movie, and that is the film in a nutshell.  Should you see it?  Only if you’re in the mood for martial arts fight scenes.  That’s it, that’s the blog.

–Daniel J. Roos