As Tien reluctantly fights Chernang, the latter pins Tien down, acknowledges tearfully him as his son, and asks him to accept his own life to avenge his father. Chernang then causes the blade of Tien's sword to snap and slash across his throat, killing himself. Exhausted and devastated, Tien collapses on the ground surrounded the soldiers, and Rajasena orders Tien to be taken away and slowly tortured to death. As the movie ends, a voiceover explains that Tien suffered this fate due to his bad karma, but adds that he may find a way to cheat death. An ambiguous scene shows him with a fully-grown beard standing in front of the Ong Bak Buddha statue.
Ong Bak 2 Movie
An international trailer for the movie was released during filming, showing the fictional setting in which Tony Jaa's character is being rescued in the jungle by a group of martial artists of various styles, and trained to unify these different systems. However, production still encountered financial problems as it came to a close. In order to complete the production on time, the filmmakers decided to end Ong Bak 2 with a cliffhanger ending, and then continue the story in a sequel, Ong Bak 3, which was announced to begin production for a 2009 release.[5]
Homegrown American martial arts stars are virtually nonexistent, following the primes of Chuck Norris, Eric Roberts, Jeff Speakman, Steven Seagal, and the Three Ninjas. But in Asia, with numerous state-subsidized film industries and national fighting styles, and nearly a century of collective chop-socky film history, martial arts movies are more than just a genre, they're a medium through which other genres can be filtered. In recent years, those films have been less occupied with envelope-pushing fights and more with relationships between characters: doomed love story (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), opera (Curse of the Golden Flower), historical drama (Jet Li's Fearless), meditation on romance and politics (Hero). In the hands of arthouse directors, export martial arts movies have gotten highbrow, while the domestics are as they always have been: as interchangeable, delightful, absurd, and intricately choreographed as a Bollywood musical.
While Ong-Bak was a modern classic set in contemporary Bangkok, its successor is set in medieval Thailand, with a poorly-explained plot about a military uprising against the rightful monarch and a main character who finds himself caught up in larger matters against his will. There's a halting love story that's completely abandoned, and a series of extended flashbacks to childhood that fills in the plot gaps. Jaa, who codirected, often uses a fairly monochromatic color palette. The movie is often unintentionally funny, as often happens when serious philosophical themes are surrounded by a guy beating the crap out of 20 people standing in a circle attacking one at a time. Reviewers and raters of the film have tended to focus on its flaws -- it only has a collective 6.4 out of 10 on IMDB -- rather than on its eye-popping action sequences.
And those action sequences are among the best ever committed to film. Ong-Bak 2 expands its ambition considerably, and despite its flaws, it is one of the best action epics since the woefully underseen Apocalypto. The actor who plays a younger version of Jaa, Natdanai Kongthong, is stunning in his own right in a crocodile mud wrestling sequence at the start of the movie. Another flashback shows the boy becoming a man, capped by a spectacular extended training sequence even better than Gordon Liu's showstopper as Pai Mei in Kill Bill Volume 2. Its climax makes the Bollywood connection even more explicit, as Jaa crashes a royal dance and attacks the usurper in a seamless spectacle, and then attempts to fight off the entire royal guard.
Tony Jaa is the best martial artist in movies today, and the charisma of his fists is nothing short of breathtaking. Like Bruce Lee in the '70s and Jet Li in the '80s and '90s, he's quite simply the most compelling action star in the world. Jaa's three movies are each modern classics for martial arts aficionados: it's just a shame that it's taken him years to complete each film. This is quite simply one of the most vital and necessary martial arts films in years.
Tony Jaa improved on one of the major fight scenes of Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior with its 2009 prequel Ong Bak 2: The Beginning. The worldwide release of Ong Bak, which started the martial arts trilogy, made the movie into a martial arts classic. Jaa later returned to the Ong Bak franchise with the prequel movies Ong Bak 2: The Beginning and Ong Bak 3.
Growing up, Brad developed an innate love of movies and storytelling, and was instantly enamored with the world of adventure while following the exploits of Indiana Jones, Japanese kaiju, and superheroes. Today, Brad channels his thoughts on all manner of movies, from comic book films, sci-fi thrillers, comedies, and everything in between through his writings on Screen Rant. Brad also offers philosophical musings on martial arts and the filmographies of everyone from Jackie Chan to Donnie Yen on Kung Fu Kingdom, where he's also had the privilege of interviewing many of the world's great stunt professionals, and hearing plenty of gripping stories on injuries incurred in their line of work and the intricacies of designing the acts of death defiance he first thrilled to as a youngster. When he's not writing, Brad enjoys going on a ride with the latest action hit or Netflix original, though he's also known to just pop in "The Room" from time to time. Follow Brad on Twitter @BradCurran.
These nine words represent the most astonishing element of "Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior," the first Thai film to break through in the martial arts market. Having seen documentaries showing how stunt men are "flown" from wires that are eliminated in post-production, having seen entire action sequences made on computers, I sat through the movie impressed at how real the action sequences seemed. Then I went to the Web site, and discovered that they were real.
The movie stars Tony Jaa, a young actor who is an accomplished stunt man and expert in Muay Thai boxing, a sentence I have typed just as if I had the slightest idea what Muay Thai boxing is. Thank you, Web site. Jaa, who plays the hero, Ting, is an acrobat and stunt man in the league of Jackie Chan or Buster Keaton, and there's an early chase through city streets where he does things just for the hell of it, like jumping through a large coil of barbed wire, jumping over two intersecting bicycles, and sliding under a moving truck.
This chase, and the tree-climbing scene, set the pace for the movie. It is 107 minutes long, and approximately seven minutes are devoted to the plot, which involves the theft of an ancient Buddhist statue from the hero's village. He has been trained by Buddhist monks and will not fight for reasons of vengeance, money or personal gain, but he agrees to go to Bangkok and retrieve the sacred statue, and for a monk with a vow of pacifism he certainly relaxes his rule against fighting. One bloody sequence has him taking on three opponents in an illegal boxing club where enormous sums are wagered by Khom Tuan (Sukhaaw Phongwilai), the local crime lord.
I arrived at the movie prepared to take notes on my beloved Levenger Pocket Briefcase, which I lost at Sundance and then miraculously had restored to me. But I found when the movie was over that I had written down its title, and nothing else. That's because there's really nothing to be done with this movie, except watch it. My notes, had I taken them, would have read something like this:
And so on, and on. The movie is based on the assumption, common to almost all martial arts movies, that the world of the hero has been choreographed and cast to supply him with one prop, location and set of opponents after another. Ting needs a couple dozen three-wheelers for a chase scene? They materialize, and all other forms of transportation disappear. He fights 20 opponents at once? Good, but no one is ever able to whack him from behind; they obediently attack him one at a time, and are smashed into defeat.
The plot includes a pretty girl (Pumwaree Yodkamol), who I think is the girlfriend of George (Petchthai Wongkamlao), a friend of Ting's from the village who has become corrupted by Bangkok and betrays him. I was paying pretty close attention, I think, but I can't remember for sure if Ting and the girl ever get anything going, maybe because any romance at all would drag the action to a halt for gooey dialogue. I think they look at each other like they'll get together after the movie.
Now, you might think that this film has some connection to the original Ong Bak of a few years back, but you would be wrong. The only thing that links the two pictures is their star, who's such a big deal in the action world that The Hollywood Reporter called Ong Bak 2 "arguably the most anticipated Thai movie ever."
If this was a 25-minute short about a warrior fighting through a hodgepodge of practically every weapon and martial art to grace a kung-fu movie, then Ong Bak 2 would be incredible. That final showpiece is a bravura performance of various combat styles and lightning-fast choreography, as Tony Jaa switches from melee to katana to three-section staff and so on.
You know it's a bad sign when your fast forwarding through a movie just to watch the action, and you end up fast forwarding most of the movie. The set piece near the end is pretty great, but that is about the only stand out scene in the film. There are a couple other decent fight scenes, but for the most part this movie is story, and I ain't watching this here movie for no story. I want bones breaking, skulls being crushed in, and people riding on elephants.
A rather confusing sequel to the cult hit Ong-Bak, this movie just doesn't work on a storytelling level as much as the first one worked... but most of the fights are still great! In fact, the ending fight sequence is top tier. 2ff7e9595c
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