Tom Yum Goong

[Drunk Monk]

Tony Jaa's latest is disappointing. Three words: too much plot. Tony still has the moves. There's some great fights, including an amazing single-shot scene where Tony works his way up past dozens of guards that runs for nearly five minutes without a cut. It's brilliant choreography - simple fights because he has to do so much with clever ways set up for him to catch his breath, and lots of broken stuff. The single shot makes it amazing because the break so much stuff, they have basically one take. John Woo did something similar with Hard Boiled. There's also a great capoiera vs. muay thai fight, a nice chase scene for Tony to show off his acrobatics, and a mass breaking of arms and legs fight. There's also big time wrestlers and a dominitrix with a whip. Yep, this is a good ol' kung fu movie, even if it's muay thai.

The plot is rather dull, filled with attempts to show what fine people the Thai are and how they love their elephants. It's like there's this story that makes little sense, then suddenly Tony appears and kicks a lot of ass. At that point, why bother with the story? Petchtai Wongkamlao costars again, Dirty Balls from Ong Bak. More important, Panna Rittikrai choreographs. Jaa was part of Panna Rittikrai's stunt team, and has several past films that are only available in Thai VCD now, no subtitles. See
http://www.tonyjaa.org/merchandises.shtml. Spirited Killer is soon to be released in US DVD, brought to us by the same people who brought us Shaolin Dolemite, which means I should be able to secure a viewers copy.

Tom Yum Goong references a restaurant, so we weren't tripping about it being a kind of soup. The restaurant premise is absurd, but who cares about that? The movie is in Thai, of course, but set in Australia, so there's large portions of English and Mandarin dialog (the villains mostly). The subtitled version I have goes in and out, and is useless, although rather funny when it's English subtitles for English dialog and it's not even close. Note that the English and Mandarin portions also have Thai subtitles, which overlap the English ones, not that they were readible anyway. Note that my version is an illegal bootleg, a DVD-R from a VCD, I think, and there may be some omissions. The official release is not yet available.

So it's not really worthy of a DOOM showing, in my mind, unless we just fast forward to the fight scenes.

[El Dingo]

I think I disagree with DM.

In fact I'm not sure we saw the same movie.

- Warehouse battle against 30 rogue extreme sports enthusiasts on skateboards, BMX bikes and ATVs wielding flourescent light bulbs

- Flaming temple fight against a swordsman, a guy with 'Pray' branded on his chest and a 7' tall wrestler

- Single-shot fight up 5 flights of stairs into a room of scorpion-eating gangsters

- Skyscaper fight against 30 men-in-black, 4 giant white guys and a dragon-lady with a whip.

Not a DOOM film?

This movie also had IMHO the BEST extras taking hits that you'd swear are fully-connecting. The foley guys have a field day with bone-snaps and some of the stunts are insane.

Yes, there are some draggy moments but we all need time to pour drinks, hit the head and smother crackers with cheese-balls.

Plus the elephant is really cute.

I do have a couple questions (my version was subtitled in Thai):

Who was the guy in the airport? Was he from Ong Bak? He looked familiar.

Why did the dragon lady poison those kids?

What happened to the Japanese-looking gangster after he shot the white guy the cop was holding as hostage?

[Drunk Monk]

note that all the things you liked were the fight scenes. that and the cute elephant, but not all of us are so into elephants. DON'T THINK ABOUT ELEPHANTS! i stand by my comment - just fast forward to the fights. forego the plot, it just muddles things. The fights are great - Tony Jaa has some serious moves.

I can't answer your questions. I had subtitles but they were totally inadequate and became entertaining on to themselves, especially when they were translating the english to english.

Note: Tony Jaa was raised in the country with elephants. He saw the films of Panna Rittikrai - Born to Fight actually, which is something you posted on our old forum right after we saw Ong Bak - and was inspired to follow him. Rittikrai has several films to his credit and is known in Thailand for his stunt team. Only Born to Fight, Ong Bak, Tom Yum Goong and a comedy called the Bodyguard featuring Petchtai Wongkamlao have been marketed outside Thailand. The others, maybe a dozen plus films, are available only as Thai VCDs. See the link above. VCDs are cheap but the res sucks. I watch a lot of stuff on VCD first, just because it's faster for me to acquire. I'm waiting to hear some recommendations on this old stuff before I venture into it tho...

[cranefly]

Drunken Monk does a good summary of the highlights and flaws of the movie.
El Dingo brings up some important questions.
Lady Cranefly and I watched a legal DVD release, which maybe had better subtitles, maybe not. What was in English was so heavily accented that I wished for subtitles.

Lady Cranefly disagrees, but I say the cameo in the airport was Jackie Chan.
The Dragon Lady poisoned the two people (one a boy) because they were successors ahead of her in the Triad or whatever was running the absurdly evil restaurant. That put her in power.
As for the third question, I'm equally fuzzed; no one seemed to be accountable for outrageous shootings, arrests, and releases.

Anyway, I suspect the plot was heavily reworked. Because I think in the original script the Australians were meant to be the evil dudes. But when Tony tried to shoot there, he found out he had to make the Australians swell people. So there's weird scenes where Australians are saying, Elephants don't belong here; they belong in Thailand, etc. Then Tony imported the baddies. You know, the Japanese. At least the Japs are supposed to be the evil ones, based on 99% of kung fu movies. But son of a gun, it was the Chinese. Is it cultural? Do the Thais hate the Chinese?

According to Drunken Monk, Tony broke his femur while making this movie, though the fact has been denied by all involved (to avoid rumors that the movie is weak because Tony got hurt). So we were trying to pin down where he broke it. We're guessing it was the dune buggy that lunged forward and banged his thigh, cutting it. The fight with the skateboarders and fluorescent lights ended quickly after that. And then the movie took a breather, it seemed. Yeah, we're guessing that was the culprit, though any of the incredible crazy-kicks throughout could have done it.

The quality of the image degraded after that in spots, with Tony's face beet red and fuzzy. I suspect this DVD was rushed, and that a later release might be worth waiting for.

But this is mostly a movie for martial artists. The dominatrix was nice, but underused and not very believable with the whip. And besides, why do dominatrices have to be evil? Then again, she WAS a woman trying to be a businessman, so I suppose that's evil in itself, just as her gay underling was evil for being gay. Yeah, lots and lots of stereotypes, and dumbed down for kiddees -- only please don't take your kids to this.

[Drunk Monk]

...there is no 'legal' DVD release of Tom Yum Goong yet. I think you still have a bootleg, a good one perhaps, but still a boot.

BTW, I just got this great North Face jacket as a gift. The 'o' is a little off, but it's a decent quality knock-off and would fool the casual onlooker. You'd have to know the North Face line pretty well to know that the jacket design doesn't really exist....

[Drunk Monk]

Tom Yum Goong, retitled The Protector for U.S. audiences, is scheduled for release on September 8th. It reminds me of Jackie's '85 film the Protector, which was his 2nd to worst film ever.

[Drunk Monk]

An Interview with RZA, soundtrack composer of "The Protector"
by Kevin Carr

Kevin Carr interviews the RZA, co-founder of Wu Tang Clan and the composer of several hot soundtracks, including "Kill Bill," "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai" and "Blade III." Kevin talks with the RZA about his upcoming film, the Thailand import "The Protector," brought to the states by the Weinstein Company.

7M: WHAT BROUGHT YOU TO THIS FILM?
I was actually supposed to have been in this film, but I couldn’t make it this time because of my schedule. So when the Weinstein Company acquired the film, they asked me to add some music to it. It was my pleasure because I always wanted to be involved in this film from its inception. Being that I missed my first opportunity to actually be a member of the cast in this film, I get to come in and help out this film in another way.

7M: DO YOU SEEK OUT MARTIAL ARTS THEMED MOVIES, OR DO THEY FIND YOU?
Both. Being a guy whose had a lot of time to view a lot of these films – and a movie geek as well, I love movies, the martial arts stuff is my favorite brand of movies. But being a guy whose been in that movie world for years, and a constant watcher of it, I think that maybe that translates a lot of things and taps into my source of values.

7M: HOW DO YOU APPROACH SOUNDTRACK DIFFERENTLY FROM AN ALBUM?
The first difference you gotta notice is that when you’re making an album, you’re actually the team. You can make the situation of what you want your album to be about. But with a film, that’s the director’s thing. Now you have to accompany and accommodate that world. I have to now watch the film and deal with what the film is trying to impress to the heart. It’s a different translation.

7M: HOW DO YOU KEEP THINGS INTERESTING IN THIS MOVIE?
In the Protector, for instance, there’s a lot of scenes that start with the Steadicam. There’s a lot of four-minute scenes. One song cannot cover the scene. There’s two or three major cues to cover this one scene, this one location, this one atmosphere. How do you carry on this music for four minutes without boring the audience with the scene, the music and the atmosphere. So the music had to keep changing. So you’re in the same location, but when the music changed, you get a different adrenaline push, a different adrenaline boost. We had to do that at least two or three times in this movie.

7M: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE STYLES YOU USE IN "THE PROTECTOR"?
Two things are different. The first thing is that I was able to go into a genre of music in this particular film. So we went from your basic Hollywood score to hip-hop, blues, house, techno, hip-hop vibe. We’ve got some rock-and-roll vibe in it. So I think I just went into a couple of chambers that I normally am not able to incorporate all in one thing. You’ll notice that the music sounds like more than ten people worked on it.

7M: DID YOU GO BACK TO THE ORIGINAL SOUNTRACK?
I actually completely started new, but there were some cues from the Thai soundtrack that I suggested that they keep. But actually the movie company didn’t want to keep any of it because they didn’t feel the vibe of it that maybe it was a little too strong from the American audience.

7M: WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM THE PROTECTOR AS A FILM?
This is an action-packed film. This is an ass-kickin’, bone-kickin’ film. I’m sure that some of the things you’ll see on the screen, you’ve never seen before. And some of the things you may hear, I don’t think you’ve never heard before. So I think this is going to be a unique experience for the buying audience.

http://www.7mpictures.com/inside/rza_feature.htm

Of course, you all know that DM went to Wudang Mountain with RZA (see http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/ar...?article=5). DM was very honored when in some seedy little nightclub in Xian, RZA proclaimed DM as one of his niggahs.

[Drunk Monk]

Our e-zine coverage of Protector
http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/ar...rticle=678
Reid outs the Jackie Chan impersonator, but CF knew that already, of course, since he's our copy editor...

[Drunk Monk]

Ok, I recant my earlier criticisms of TYG1. ED is right - it is a fine DOOM flick. I must have been too sober watching this the first time. Either that or I think I was holding Jaa to a higher standard based on OB. But that was so many cheesey Thai flix ago and now I have learned that Thai film is just as cheesey as most all Kung Fu cinema, and I'm totally ok with that. TYG1 stands as one of Jaa's finest as the choreography was superb. Why was I looking for plot? I dunno. I have made my peace with TYG1. I love big brother Baa-Ram-Ewe.

Well, since then, Jaa has turned in some super cheesey stuff, a lot of it sub-par on many levels, not just plot. Then, in real life, he stole all the money he was given to make OB3 and disappeared. Then he came back and in a tear-filled interview, apologized to all of Thailand and the world. Then OB3 was finished, and it sucked.

TGY2 not only reunites Jaa, his cute elephant, and Dirty Balls, it adds Jeeja as a Kiss-of-the-Dragon acupuncture-needle-tossing kogel, up-and-comer Marrese Crump, and DM's-patron-drinking-parter RZA. It's total Baa-Ram-Ewe. Good stunts. Good fights. Absurd plot, irritatingly so. Tony's elephant gets stolen again by an assassin cult who hold it hostage to for him to make a hit. He gets framed for Jeeja's dad's assassination, and there's a few more subplots, but those don't really matter as you'll be refreshing your drink and slathering more cheeseball on your crackers for those.

- The action starts fast and furious, then slacks off a little, then there's a lot of climactic fights and way to many kill-the-villain-so-he-rises-agains (what I call the Jason syndrome).

- Undercutting some really good stunts and fights is the copious uses of CGI. It cheapens a lot of it. At least when Jackie resorts to CGI, you can clearly see what is real and what is CGI. In TYG2, that isn't as clear, mostly because the camerawork is too muddled. It's not crackhead camerawork. It's just not very good so some of the action is lost.

- Lots of wirework and parkour-esque stuff. Wirework parkour defeats the purpose.

- The soundtrack was distractingly bad - from wannabe-Giorgio-Moroder to Guitar-hero - RZA really needs to redo the soundtrack.

- Jeeja was a little under-used. Marrese is a good foil for Jaa.

- RZA is great because he has this distinctive laugh. I have heard it in person many times. Now I realize that it was actually his evil villain laugh.

- Did you know that if you kickbox on the electric-third-rail of a rapid transit system with wet shoes, you can make lightsaber sounds with your legs and throw lightning bolts from your feet?

- There's a thai fightin hottie (named 'twenty' which is branding in her cleavage) who wears only wide red ribbons in her first duel.

- No swordfights, but there's a long scooter-fu chase with machetes, which comes out of nowhere and is an early centerpiece of the film.

- It has NG. Could you say "I wanna be Jackie Chan" any louder?

[Drunk Monk]

[youtube]SbrFY8XKsr4[/youtube]

[cranefly]

I've heard rumors that TYG 4 will be a period piece, with Thomas Edison playing the villain. Edison steals Jaa's elephant with the intent of electrocuting it using alternating current to discredit Tesla.
The climactic fight scene will take place inside a gigantic light bulb.