Movie Club #1: Ong-Bak

Ong-Bak


PG-13, 1 hr. 47 min.

"Thai stuntman Tony Jaa makes his starring debut in this martial arts action film directed by Prachya Pinkaew. Ja plays Ting, a young man living in a village in rural Thailand. Discovered as an infant on the steps of the town's temple and raised by monks who taught him the Thai martial art of muay thai, Ting is sent to Bangkok when the head of the town's statue of the Buddha, to which they pray to bring the annual rains to their drought-stricken region, is stolen. The country boy is plunged into the big city's seething criminal underworld, and forced to use his fighting skills to dispatch a parade of thugs in an underground fight club on his way to finding the criminal mastermind who stole the Buddha head so he can return it before drought and starvation bring his hometown to ruin. ~ Tom Vick, Rovi"

This has been on my radar for years but I never got around to seeing it. It's now available on Netflix and I plan on taking advantage. Ong-bak is a martial arts action movie and stars Tony Jaa who received incredible reviews and was compared to both Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee for this performance. Jaa hasn't really done much that I'm aware of since, other than Ong-bak sequels which have not been as favourably reviewed. Still, this movie has an impressive RT score of 86% so crappy sequels not withstanding I'm looking forward to watching this!

Since the image is broken for me, what's the title of the film?

Yeah it's broken here too. Might want to just save and attach them.

I DON'T NEED A PICTURE TO KNOW THE MOVIE IS ONG BAK.

I don't either, now that I've clicked the Rotten Tomatoes link!

Hey Trunk, you should edit the title of this thread to put the movie title in, because that will help for thread-searches in the future. Like this: "Movie Club #1: Ong Bak"

Good flick as the genre goes.

I didn't know a movie club was happening, and I don't actually see a general movie club thread. Are you planning to curate movies? Or is this going to be more like the book club where picks are on a rotating basis?

I updated the OP but I don't think I can change the title unfortunately.

You're not looking too hard are you?
http://brokenforum.com/index.php?threads/broken-forum-movie-club.4748/

Thanks, I swear I looked. Must have gone right past it.

Oooh, I've always wanted to see this!

Oooh, I've never heard of this.
But I have Netflix.

Thanks to our wonderful overlord for updating the thread title!

This is a great film. Enjoy!

I love this movie. For fans of martial arts movies this is a must see. I think when I first saw this I was at a point where I was getting tired of the wire-fu of a lot of martial arts movies, and while I enjoyed the craziness of Jackie Chan in his younger days with his own stunts and the amazing physicality of what he was doing, it still was rooted in more of a comedy than an action movie. Tony Jaa and his fellow co-stars in this are just brutal. The stunts are great, they feel grounded in something that could be done, but because you aren't Tony Jaa, you'll never be able to! His Ong-Bak followups were meh, and The Protector has it's moments as well, but this film is his peak at the moment!

I love this movie. Nixon66 pretty much sums up why.

Also, because of Muay Thai vs. Capoeira.

I hope you have a good connection, netflix can ruin this movie. My connection tends to fall apart on any fast scene.

Hey, one I have already seen!!! I watched this a few months ago and enjoyed it and have the next two in my queue, but other things jumped ahead.

Also, I forgot to mention in my earlier post. If you like the raw fighting that this movie brings, you owe it to yourself to find and watch a movie called The Raid. Seriously. Different style of martial arts, but it's Ong Bak fighting without much of the story getting in the way of people beating on each other. A movie length non-stop ride of action. Truly breathtaking at times.

Trailer is NSFW.

Yeah, the stunts in this movie are insane, they do stuff that they would never let Jackie Chan do anymore. In some ways I feel guilty watching Thai action movies, because of their safety standards. Ong Bak's stunts mostly seemed to go well, judging from the 'blooper' real at the end, but the director did another one (Chocolate) in which a stuntman fell several stories and had to be hospitalized that looked pretty scary.

I really liked this movie when it was released here in the US. I bought it maybe 6 months ago on a cheap DVD but haven't gotten around to watching it again.

WATCHED IT again last night after what must have been the right length of time since the last time I'd seen it--I'd forgotten many of the cooler bits. Tony Jaa's just ridiculously acrobatic and coordinated and his stunts are a joy to watch.

Of the Ong Baks, the first does fit together much better as a whole. Ong Bak 2 & 3 are actually prequels, and that only in the very vaguest sense of Jaa's character in them being Ting's ancestor; both of them try to bite off more than they can chew (or skull more than they can elbow, perhaps), particularly the third, which tries for depth it just can't reach. But the fighting in both remains fantastic, though amped up into more mythical levels. (Ie, in Ong Bak, our hero is faced with a dozen-plus enemies--he turns around and hauls ass away in that whole great freerunning-stunt sequence. In Ong Bak 2's final battles, he fights four or five times that number, and to be fair is utterly exhausted by it--but still kills them all.) The lower-budget constraints made it all much more grounded and earnest.

In rewatching it, I have to say I think my favorite fighting style he went up against was Mad Dog. Just picking up random heavy objects and hitting your opponent with them is a pretty great style of martial arts. You can tell it's going to win against anyone not with protagonist power. I had also completely forgotten about the sequence I now think of as the Tuk-Tuk Massacre (which a hypothetical Just Cause 3 must include an homage to. I think it's a moral obligation).

Tuk-Tuk Massacre would make a great band name.

WATCHED IT

Not bad? I may've ruined this a bit for myself by seeing The Raid: Redemption last weekend, which covered some similar ground. Very different tone, but the comedy here didn't work for me half the time. It felt a bit more like a stunt demo than a movie, especially with the action shots repeating from different angles.

I did like the stunt work quite a lot, and like Neopythia I laughed aloud at the Tuk Tuk explosion. Worth watching, but I don't think I'll be hunting down more Tony Jaa stuff without good reason.

Watched a while ago. It's still great, IMO. Incredible martial arts (love the x-ray freeze-frames, even if it's been done before), although the story could have been a bit more developed. The scene in the butcher shop, for some reason, is my favorite. I may be looking at this from rose-colored glasses, though, and I was definitely spoiled by The Raid and Dredd more recently, but I just remember it being awesome.

WATCHED IT

Ong-Bak was an excellent number of fight sequences. It wasn't much of a story though, despite the attempts to develop the George character. At least his death manages to coincide with the best fight in the film (oddly not the finale). All of the sequences were good though but the cut of the film I saw on Canadian Netflix largely erased the Don/Girlfriend subplot that involved Pumwaree Yodkamol (Muay Lek) from the film and rendered her an incomprehensible tag along.

The Tuk-Tuk chase was some of the best fun I've seen in these kinds of films though.

WATCHED IT

Loved the action, though showing the same stunt from multiple angles was a little annoying. The story was okay, but predictable. I enjoyed the chase scenes more than the full-on fight scenes.

WATCHED IT, and I think that's pretty much my impression of it. I enjoy it while watching it and that's pretty much all I need here.

WATCHED IT and I agree. It was a fun but there's not a whole lot to discuss about it. I didn't expect it to be some insanely thought provoking movie or anything but it really is just a spectacle and I'm good with that.

WATCHED IT

OK for what it is. Not very good. Bad acting. Bad script/translation. Repetitive gags. Lots of knees and elbows. Pedestrian action/fight sequences. Better than drowning in my bath.

WATCHED IT

It was entertaining enough. It was basically Thai boxing porn. Also the fact that everyone screams everything they say, got to me a bit. And I didn't care for the instant replays on the stunts, though that annoyed me less when I read up on it after and learned that there was apparently no CGI or wire-fu involved.

However, it was super fun as a social watching experience, and I don't feel as though I wasted my time at all.

A good part of the entertainment is knowing that it was all stunts and they were all done by the actors without assistance. I wonder if there are outtakes and some of those must have been painful!

Watched it (A week or two ago)

Some friends and I threw this on after a few rousing games of Call of Duty Zombies. I've seen it before, and so had a few others, but the rest of the people were going into it blind. Highlights for their appreciation came from the chase scenes and the fight scenes, specifically the very last one.

They didn't believe us when we said there was no non-real special effects, and that Tony Jaa did all of his own stunts.

I liked the sequels more.

I watched the early foot chase again the other day. I really enjoy that sort of thing, where one guy is just so confident he pretty much doesn't stop moving, just jumps over, under, and through every obstacle with his pursuers pausing, running around or blundering through them.

Yeah, I would LOVE to see outtakes on that film, or maybe even just a making of on the stunts bits.

WATCHED IT.

Finally. Sorry guys, I'm lame.

So...first time viewer here. I'm thinking maybe I would've thought more of this film before seeing stuff like The Raid or...just about every action movie since 2003. It's pretty clear from the music tracks and the direction this was an indie affair, but that's no excuse for lame instant replay nonsense. I was getting a little annoyed at the times where they'd show something he did from another angle, in slow-mo...sometimes twice, in case we blinked for 10 whole seconds and missed the first two instances.

It's pretty cheesy, the fights feel fairly rag-dolly; and it's pretty convenient that Ting is all "LOOK AT ALL THE FUCKS I GIVE" when Mad Dog was breaking tables on his ass but god forbid a dude on roids levels a few kicks at him and now he's all "FROINLAVEN!"

I realize that's a pretty standard convention of the genre but it's one that gets a little annoying. A little vulnerability earlier on would've been nice to balance.

Gripes aside, it was still pretty fun movie, it was one that's been in my queue for a while, and I'm curious as to whether the production values and plotting make 2 or 3 worth seeing.

The DVD I saw must've been the same cut on Canadian netflix. The Don/Girlfriend OD felt like a remnant from a plot that got cut. Is there a longer version of this movie or something?

Not really. 2 maybe, but 3 is largely forgettable.

Partially seconded, although stronger than a maybe on 2--it has some rather nice fight choreography. But 3 has an awful lot of filler and is very skippable.