Eye Candy #39 - "Ong Bak 2"

Ong Bak 2: If you can get past some truly, truly TERRIBLE voice-over dubbing (unless of course, you‘re in to really bad dubbing and then game on), you will be rewarded by some truly energetic fight scenes from Tony Jaa, Thailand’s answer to Jet Li. A prequel to Jaa’s first “Ong Bak” movie, this film is set in medieval Thailand, where a young boy Tien, escapes the destruction of his family, and then finds himself rescued from slavery (in a fashion) by a group of bandits who then raise him and train him in various martial arts. As Tien grows older (this is Jaa‘s part), he uses his martial arts skill to become the most dangerous man alive and he strikes out to seek revenge on those who murdered his family years ago. Moving beyond just Jaa’s muay thai comfort zone (or what I like to call “Knees and elbows”), he stages several well-choreographed fights using other martial arts forms that are very exciting to watch. Jaa’s strong suit has never been his acting ability, so the adult Tien is given very little dialogue and spends a lot of the film staring out from under a mop of stringy hair that leads him to resemble a crazy member of the Jackson family. Intentionally open-ended, there is already an “Ong Bak 3” in the works. I thought this was better than either of Jaa’s previous films. Woodchuck sez, “Me likey.”