The Trent’s Movie Review: The Protector (Tom yum goong)
Anyone who has seen Ong Bak knows that Tony Jaa kicks marvelous ass on the big screen. Anybody who’s able to throw a kick after doing a double somersault without the use of wires or CGI definately deserves a “Oh… My… God…” when watching. So when I had heard that Tony Jaa had another movie out, I had to give it a looking at.
The King who rides upon the most perfect elephant holds the greatest strength and is said to never be defeated. Cam (Tony Jaa) is a young villager within Thailand where they raise elephants, with the hope of raising the perfect elephant to carry the King - and I assume to reap the rewards of pleasing the King too. Later in his life they take their grand elephant, who also has a baby elephant whom Cam has grown up alongside with, to the fair where the elephants are evaluated and chosen by the King.
However this is merely a ploy by a Chinese syndicate, based in Sydney, Australia, to steal the elephant. And they succeed, killing Cam’s father and taking both the big and the baby elephants along with them. Cam gets pissed off - imagine what happens next.
Ong Bak had the basic storyline of “Hey guys, gimme back my Buddha!”, and then a bunch of ass kicking ensued. So it would only be fitting to say that this movie had the storyline “Hey guys, gimme back my elephants!” and then asskicking ensues. It’s only fair to say that The Protector has it’s great share of fight scenes, however overall Ong Bak seems to win.
Being from Australia, it’s awful to hear the Australian accents overdubbed onto the film and just hearing them makes me shudder… Seriously… We don’t always say “G’day” and we don’t all sound so nasal - ok, it happens, but not all of us. What’s more the overdubbing is pretty bad and subtitles seem to come and go as if they couldn’t quite decide on which scenes to make english or not - but I suppose this can be forgiven as it’s an Asian martial arts film, and that’s what makes those movies. The camera work, or the editing, isn’t as good as Ong Bak - this one has used the Transformers style of camera whereby the faster it moves, the faster it makes the action. I would prefer to have a camera on a tripod and watch all of Tony Jaa’s movements in still, I mean after all, he smacks the crap out of people using his feet, elbows, knees and fists all whilst doing backflips - that’s just batshit insane!
The greatest scenes were where he fought against the capoeira opponent within the burning temple as well as the beginning of his second fight against Nathan Jones (who stands at 6′11″ and is built like a brick shithouse!)… Seriously, I had to replay that like four times, then grab the rest of my family just so we could all wet ourselves with excitement when the two ran head first at each other - if anything, hire the movie just to see it!
The Protector was good, not up to Ong Bak standards (additionally I hear they’re making a sequel to that movie) but still a good lazy watch. Even Jackie Chan makes a quick cameo appearance, obviously this has to show that Jaa is moving up in the world and is DEFINATELY the next one to look out for whenever you want to watch a martial arts film in the future.
Seriously…
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i c wut u did thar
Oh man, I just loved this film! As you said, it isn’t as good as Ong Bak but it still remains awesome. I like the part where he faces those 3 giant body builders and breaks their bones… truly a great martial arts film.
The scene before that where he goes through like 100 guys by breaking their arms and legs was pretty boss… Also the stair scene which was done in 1 take… He must have been so bloody tired after all of it.
tony jaa is sooo hot