‘Thai Warrior’ action movie introduces next Bruce Lee

Have you ever wished that you could leap over a truck and split some guys motorcycle helmet in two with your elbow, but every time you try you find that you lack the lifetime of martial arts training to do it?

I know I have, but thanks to “Ong-Bak: the Thai Warrior,” now available on DVD, I can live these fantasy vicariously through Tony Jaa rather than risk my own life.

The trailers hailed Jaa as the new Bruce Li. I was skeptical about such claims at first but Jaa delivers in a big way. The action sequences in the film are fast and flat out amazing. Jaa performs stunts never before captured on film.

These stunts combined with Jaa’s athleticism combine for some fight scenes that really steal the show. The bar room brawls alone are worth the price of the rental.

Unfortunately, however, the fighting is the main star of the film. The plot is interesting but pretty predicable. Ting, (Jaa) must leave his small village and travel to Bangkok to recover the headpiece of a statue in his town’s temple. Along the way he must battle gangsters and help Humlae – who had left the village long ago and lost himself to big city life – remember what is truly important.

While this story isn’t going to stick with you forever, it does develop the characters and serve its main purpose of stringing the fight scenes together.

The biggest problem with the movie would be the subtitles. Normally I love subtitles but they were horrible for this movie. They read more like closed captions of the English dubbing which means often I would find myself reading that the people were [yelling in Thai] or [speaking indistinct], which kind of ruined what would probably have been some really good performances by the actors.

So there you have it, Ong-Bak delivers amazing action, passable plot and some sorry subtitles.

All in all, if you go into this movie with the right attitude (the right attitude being, “I want to see some cool action”) you will probably not be disappointed by Ong-Bak.

Steve Shinney is a junior majoring in computer science. Comments can be sent to him steveshinney@cc.usu.edu.