Directed by Tony Jaa. Starring Tony Jaa, Sorapong Chatree, Sarunyu Wongkrachang, Nirut Sirijunya. 16 cert, Cineworld/UCI Tallaght, Dublin, 98 min
THE BEGINNING of what exactly? Not of the (literally) smashing Ong Bak, which took place some 500 years after this film ends and which employed a very different tone. That film, one of the few Thai martial arts spectaculars to make it to Europe, must surely have been the thumpiest, ouchiest release of 2003.
It seems as if Tony Jaa – star of both Ong Baks, now making his debut as director – has a mind to deliver a Thai take on House of Flying Daggers. Ditching Ong Bak's contemporary setting, he casts himself as Tiang, a deft 15th-century martial artist out to avenge the murder of his noble parents. After a run-in with slavers, our young hero was adopted by a horde of brigands who teach him the most efficient and elegant ways to kick a man into mincemeat. Watch out bad guys.
The gritty, utilitarian look of the first film has been replaced by sweeping shots of rampaging elephants, towering jungles and roaring multitudes. Employing a preposterously grandiose, infuriatingly intrusive score and making promiscuous use of slow motion, Jaa too often strays from Zhang Yimou territory into Jerry Bruckheimer's unlovely terrain. Every time you think the film is about to become Apocalypto, it decides to become Pirates of the Caribbeaninstead.
Never mind. You don't come to an Ong Bakfilm for the art direction, you come for the fights and, once again, Jaa delivers. Peppering the action with savage vignettes, before ending with an epic battle between the hero and a legion of hoodlums (at least one of whom appears to be wearing a laundry basket on his head), the director constructs martial arts sequences that appear to feature genuine concussions and troublingly convincing dislocations.
The sight of elbows smashing into noses is gruelling enough, but the sound of the blows – both squelchy and crunchy – is something else altogether. It’s the noise I imagine you might hear when a fat man sits on a tortoise. Over and over again.
