Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior/องค์บาก (2003) - The acrobatic martial arts breakthrough

♥♥♥

 

+ Best $ Return of the Year: 18.3 times its cost + Best Martial Arts Movie of the Year + Best Thai Movie of the Year

 

Star Tony Jaa's muscular back in warm, earthy tones makes up this poster for Prachya Pinkaew's Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior

When a Thai village have the head of their protective Ong-Bak Buddha statue stolen, a young, virile man gets chosen to head out on the dangerous journey to the big city (Bangkok) to repossess the holy artifact.

 

Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior is written by Suphachai Sittiaumponpan (Thai Theeb (2006)), with Panna Rittikrai (Black Goblins (1990)) and co-writer/co-producer/director Prachya Pinkaew (Rawng tah laep plaep (1992)) contributing story elements.

Young Ting (Tony Jaa (Monster Hunter (2020))), the brave young man in question, beats up and suffers beatings from a fantastic amount of people, and the fighting scenes take up most of the film's running time. And here are very cool and acrobatic choreography to admire.

Aside from this significant quality, Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior is overlong and, outside of its action, amateurish.

 

Related post:

 

2003 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 

 

Watch a 3-minute clip from the film here

 

Cost: 1.1 mil. $

Box office: 20.2 mil. $

= Mega-hit (returned 18.3 times its cost)

[Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior premiered 21 January (Bangkok International Film Festival) and runs 108-105 minutes (Thai version/international version). Shooting took place in Thailand, including in Bangkok. The film opened #17 to a 1.3 mil. $ first weekend in 387 theaters in North America, its 2nd biggest market, where it grossed 4.5 mil. $ (22.3 of the total gross). The biggest market was France with 6.4 mil. $ (31.7 %), and 3rd biggest was Thailand with 2.5 mil. $ (12.4 %). The success resulted in 2 sequels; Ong-Bak 2 (2008) and Ong-Bak 3 (2010), with Jaa and Pinkaew returning. Pinkaew first returned with The Protector/Tom yum goong (2005), which was also Jaa's next movie. Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior is certified fresh at 85 % with a 7/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior?

Beautiful Boxer/บิวตี้ฟูล บ๊อกเซอร์ (2004) or, The Struggles of Nong Toom

♥♥♥♥♥

+ Best Biopic of the Year + Best LGBT Movie of the Year + Best Sports Movie of the Year + Best Thai Movie of the Year 

Asanee Suwan applies hand bandages on the poster for Ekachai Uekrongtham's Beautiful Boxer

QUICK REVIEW:

The story of Nong Toom, a transsexual boy, who experiences a lot of hardship in life and sees an opening to achieve his goal, a sex change operation, through Muay Thai [Thai boxing]! - Much more fighting awaits.
Beautiful Boxer is a fantastic film based on a fantastic true story. It is inspiring and enlightening, both about life as a transsexual and about Thailand. Made with great empathy and beautifully carried out in good-looking pictures and brilliant acting, particularly by Asanee Suwan (The Coffin (2008)) in the lead. He plays the rich, complex character, the exciting development and the many good fighting scenes to a T.
Only the fierce lingering on the past and its ghosts is perhaps a little bit overdone in the film, where I instead was curious about other things, Nong Toom's love life for instance.
It is directed by Ekachai Uekrongtham (Pleasure Factory (2007)), who is busy with his next film, an exciting Thai-US action movie with Tony Jaa, Ron Perlman, Dolph Lundgren etc. called Skin Trade (2015).
Beautiful Boxer is a great film that I warmly recommend! 

Related posts:

2004 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Top 10: The best true story movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

Watch the English language trailer here

Budget: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown

What do you think of Beautiful Boxer?
Other great martial arts films with an unusual angle to them?

Only God Forgives (2013) - Refn's violent vigilante beauty in Bangkok

♥♥♥♥♥♥

+ 3rd Best Movie of the Year
+ Best Danish Movie of the Year

Visually restrained yet fiercely energetic and powerful, this sun-drenched French poster for Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives

Danish master filmmaker, writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive (2011)) returns to his old strange, twisted self with Only God Forgives, his 9th feature, which resembles his Mads Mikkelsen-starring mute viking psych-out Valhalla Rising (2009) and his John Turturro-starring crime mystery Fear X (2003) more than his preceding smash hit Drive. Perhaps therefore it disappointed a lot of critics and audiences at the time of its release, who, after the more conventional and very popular Drive, just didn't seem to get it.
- But pay no heed to that negative hype; Only God Forgives is an unmissable film. And how often does a phenomenal filmmaker invite us on a sword-and-martial-arts-mixing modern western myth with big stars in Bangkok? Frankly, I think that many critics and audiences were blinded by conventions and ungrateful, wrong expectations.

Only God Forgives is the story of two brothers. One is bad; he kills and rapes a young girl and gets murdered for it. The other tries to be good, but is damaged and put under new pressure by their ruthless, drug-running mother to avenge her lost son. Meanwhile, a fierce local cop exerts a kind of Old Testament justice in Bangkok's grimy netherworld of criminal filth.

In other words, it's a totally straightforward and perfectly understandable basic story. The pace is, - regardless of what others may write, - stable and continually moves ahead in an old-fashioned western/horror-kind of steady rhythm, - with gruesomely violent and sexually charged scenes coming one after the next, each serving a clear purpose for the story.
Ryan Gosling (Drive (2011)) is awesomely cool here once again as a very silent protagonist, - this time not as a winner type, however, - and British actress Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient (1996)), boldly gone along on this film which is nothing like what she usually does, is a superb matriarchal villain, whose deviousness and possible wrongdoings onto her sons in the past haunt her behavior - and theirs. Thai actor Vithaya Pansringarm (The Hangover Part II (2011)) also does wonders as the mystical, local cop, who exerts a Dirty Harry (1971)/Death Wish (1974) type official vigilante justice, which feels fresh and unlike any before seen vengeance mission, both due to his performance and the execution, but also due to its implicit feeling of its being a mysterious, righteous justice from the East upon the traveling, incoming wretches of the West.
The title, like the rest of the film, is not designed to be a crowd-pleaser. Religious people will most likely dislike its implications, and surely we can all agree that it's not the nicest of thoughts that only God forgives. I think it is to be considered in terms of genre and as a hint as to the logic of the stern Thai avenger we meet in the film. Though Only God Forgives is an art film and a genre enjoyment, (SPOILER the gruesome eye-spearing shot is as taken right out of a Lucio Fulci horror film of the 1980s), its title is probably decided to resonance such films as Gianfranco Parolini's Lee Van Cleef-starring spaghetti western, God's Gun (1976). It also incarnates the villainous mother's crude perception of life.
DP Larry Smith (The Guard (2011)), composer Cliff Martinez (Contagion (2011)), costume designer Wasitchaya 'Nampeung' Mochanakul and art director's Witoon 'Boom' Suanyai and Russell Barnes (Howl (2010)) also deserve the highest compliments for an aesthetically amazing, pompously decadent and neon-drenched dream of a film, meticulously carved out, which looks and sounds amazing.

SPOILER Besides everything else, I love the film's strange, beautiful and darkly funny karaoke-sequences and the ending. Only God Forgives is a truly rare film that should be watched, and can be watched many times, each time registering something new.

It may also be Gosling's last starring vehicle in a good while, as he has said that he wants to retire from acting and is now directing his first, mysteriously sounding, How to Catch a Monster (2014), about a secret underwater town. (Ed. note: That film ended up being retitled Lost River (2014), a major flop which critics also axed, and Gosling is now back in front of the camera where he belongs.)

Refn is slated to do a 200 mil. $ remake of the 1976 sci-fi-classic, Logan's Run. Whether this will ever actually happen, and whether a good movie will come out of it, I have my anxieties and doubts. (Ed. note: This was scrapped, and Refn is instead focusing on a horror movie for 2016, titled The Neon Demon.) Together with Only God Forgives, his best film remains, in my opinion, Pusher II (2004), very worth seeing for anyone just slightly hooked by his films.

Related posts:

Nicolas Winding Refn: The Neon Demon (2016) or, Jesse Goes to Hollywood 

2013 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED VI]

Top 10: Best Danish movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]  
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess 

Top 10: Best car chases in movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

Drive (2011) - Refn's muscle-flexing, über-cool audience favorite
Bronson (2008) or, Violent Man

2004 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Top 10: Best drug-themed movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

2004 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

With Blood on My Hands: Pusher II/Pusher II (2004) - Refn's magnetic snapshot of Copenhagen's criminal underground

1999 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 
Bleeder (1999) - The mysterious second film by Nicolas Winding Refn 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 4.8 mil. $
Box office: 10.6 mil. $
= Flop (returned 2.2 times the cost)
[Only God Forgives premiered 22 May (Cannes Film Festival, in competition) and runs 90 minutes. Shooting took place in Bangkok. Thailand. The film opened #26 to a 313k $ first weekend in 78 theaters in North America, its peak there although it widened to 81 cinemas, grossing 779k $ (7.3 % of the total gross). North America was its 3rd biggest market. The biggest and 2nd biggest were France with France with 3.6 mil. $ (40 %) and the UK with 1.8 mil. $ (17%). The film won 3/7 nominations at the Robert awards (Denmark's Oscar), among other honors. Refn returned with a Hennessey X.O. commercial in 2016 and theatrically with The Neon Demon (2016). Gosling returned in The Big Short (2015); Thomas in Before the Winter Chill/Avant l'Hiver (2013); and Pansringarm in short film Gutted (2013) and theatrically in Ninja: Shadow of a Tear (2013). Only God Forgives is rotten at 40 % and a 5.3/10 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Only God Forgives?