Tom Yum Goong DVD/Movie Review

'Imitation is the highest form of flattery.'

The Thai stuntman turned action-star wow'ed audiences with his acrobatics and his mastery of Muay-thai kickboxing in his first film 'Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior'. This film was considered an international smash-hit and was even released in the US theatres last year. The critics inevitably compared Jaa to all the Asian action hero's prior to him and I can definitely see the similarities. Jaa posesses the cat like agility of a young Jackie Chan, the grace/ferocity of Jet Li's martial arts mastery and is innovative with his fight choreography like Bruce Lee. I personally don't think Jaa is imitating any of the Asian action stars prior to him. It's more due to the fact Bruce/Jackie/Jet set the 'martial-arts/action movie making' bar really high.

So after seeing Jaa kick butt in 'Ong Bak' and seeing the trailer online for his sophmore film, 'Tom Yum Goong', I was really looking forward to seeing this movie. This movie was released originally in Asia cinemas back in August '05 and I was finally able to rent the DVD on Monday night.

The best way I can summarize this movie and his prior film; it's like watching a porno...you fast forward the flimsy plot to get to good stuff. But I usually sit thru a film once to give it a chance and maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. This rule applies to a movie not a porno :)

Despite being duped that this film was shot in Dolby 5.1 English; the movie was completely in Thai/Broken English with Chinese/Korean subtitles...WTF...I should've known better than to trust the packaging on a Asian DVD. The storyline is Kham (Jaa) a country-bumpkin grows up with his dad and 2 pet elephants. The first 20 minutes of the film shows Jaa as a kid and the bond he had with his pet elephants. One day, Kham and his dad went to a parade for a local politician; the politician then has thugs shoot the dad and kidnap or 'elephant-nap' their pets. Kham then finds a photo with 2 of the thugs posing in front of a restaurant called 'Tom Yum Goong'. Which later on we find out they're speciality is food cooked with endangered animals. The restaurant is located in Australia and the pressure is on for Kham to rescue his beloved pets.

Jaa definitely didn't stray from his 'action first and plot second formula', but rarely any of these action stars ever do. The plot was bad compounded with the fact that I don't understand Thai/Broken English nor read Chinese/Korean. But the action scenes make up for the lack of a plot. The three scenes that sticks out for me is; the brief cameo with Jackie Chan, the single-frame scene where Jaa fights up 5 flights of stairs and the camera never cuts away, and my personal favorite; Jaa fights about 30 thugs and breaks either an arm or a leg.

I'd highly recommend this movie if your looking for well done action sequences...but if your in the mood for a movie with a plot; just keep the remote handy and be ready for some fast forwarding.

For additional info for these movies: The Official Ong Bak DVD site and the Official Tom Yum Goong Movie site.