Meanwhile, Tien begins to learn that in order to be whole he must free himself of his anger and hate, seeking not revenge, but a oneness with himself. Unleashing a torrent of evil on the countryside, the Crowwitchdemonthing soon sets his sights toward defeating Tien. When he is freed and returned to his village to heal, a Crow-like demon/witch character takes to the scene to kill everyone Tien is too weak to face. He’s broken, destroyed and being kept around for the amusement of the evil lord who defeated him. Fresh from the downer, clap-real-loud-and-Ong-Bak-will-return-in-a-third-film Peter Pan ending on part 2, Tien (Jaa) is still around, not yet having died. Yeah, here’s where the film goes way off the rails. Let that roll around in your noggin for a few moments. The stunts are mediocre, or worse, CG the things that are there to wow you (in place of the stunts) are poorly done special effects tied to story elements you don’t care about and worst of all, the film’s philosophical center is one of the worst ideas in modern cinema history. It looks and feels more like the lesser Hong Kong historical epics than it does anything resembling the badass, story-be-damned awesomeness of the earlier Thai work. There is not a single stunt or moment in ONG BAK 3 that will wow you, not one thing that is does better or even on par with what they did in the first film. In other words, they have become lower budget, less talented, watered down versions of the films we already have. Inspired by the films of Hong Kong and Hollywood, they have become slicker, better produced and much more professional. You know longer get the feeling that their films or stunts are authentic. Everything raw, dangerous and unique about their films is gone. With the success of Tony Jaa and an influx of investment capital in the region, everything is more organized, less ramshackle and just plain boring. Followed almost immediately by such Thai classics as THE PROTECTOR and my personal favorite, the insane Michael Bay inspired BORN TO FIGHT, many of us wondered aloud what it was that made Thai action films radically different from everything else in the world.Īround here we had a humorous answer for that: because life is cheap in Thailand. And some of these shots were so good – not to mention 100% authentic – that they repeated the stunt from different angles just to prove it. There were guys jumping through coils of barbed wire, scaling walls in single shots and taking tumbles that no doubt broke bones. When imports of the original ONG BAK began circulating here in Austin in late 2003/early 2004, there was an unbelievable about of excitement surrounding them. There was really something magical about the early years of Thai action filmmaking in the last decade.
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