ong bak , the best (and only) thai film ive seen

[PAUL MARTINEZ]

I just recently saw it and was blown away by the action sequences. The lead character is the most impressive Martial Artist I've seen since Jet Li. The story wasn't anything special but no worse than most films. My one complaint would be with the leading actress. Although not prominently featured in the film, she seemed to overact everytime she got any screen time. It got to the point of being annoying. Outside of that I loved it.

[magic-8]

That's too bad for Tony Ja (Panom Yeerum). An Asian going to Hollywood is signalling a death knell to that person's career. They may make a ton of money but the product is mediocre at best. See Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat. They all did some Hollywood crap movies but none have been anywhere close to their HK glory days. The only people to make it in Hollywood, besides white Americans are those Brits and Aussies who know how to act or use an American accent in their performances.

[AV1979]

Tony Ja is currently at work on Tom Yum Goong, which is like Ong Bak except instead of a statue, he has to get an elephant. He takes on former WWE star Nathan Jones and stuntman Johnny Nguyen in the film.

I agree with magic-8. Tony Ja going to Hollywood would be a mistake because he will get limited to show what he can do. He will end up another action star who is not able to show the full capacity of his fight skills and then he'll go back to Thailand and do what he wants.

As for more Thai action, Born to Fight (Kerd Ma Lui), the remake of the 1986 film that inspired Tony to do what he does today, looks impressive.

[sbxabyss]

I heard a while back that Ong Bak was picked up by Magnolia Pictures for a US theatrical release but do not know if that is still going to happen or not...yeah as much as I'd love to see a thai actor get more burn internationally, hollywood may be the beginning of the end for him - we'll see what happens...it'a a fine line between art and commerce.

[MrBooth]

Tony Jaa also has a brief cameo in the Thai film THE BODYGUARD, but he's only there for a minute. The film does have some other fun action scenes, but very wire-heavy and played for comic effect. The shootout at the beginning is a hilarious parody of John Woo style action scenes