1999 Tony Jaa movie

[Gaijin84]

Has anyone seen this?

http://www.hkflix.com/xq/asp/filmID.539196/qx/details.htm

Wondering if Tony Jaa actually plays a prominent role in it or if its a bit of false marketing...

[MrBooth]

http://www.tonyjaa.org/

The early Tony Jaa's films list has been updated with the following information : Plook Mun Kuen Ma Kah 4 and Nuk Kah Win Yarn Hode are actually the same film and include a long fight between Tony Jaa and his master Panna Rittikrai. The film can already be bought at Ethaicd.com and will be available on the Spirited Killer DVD due for release on Sept 19. Some screencaptures are available in the gallery, thanks to ThailandFight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v97a18vI1T8

The trailer probably contains everything in the film that's worth seeing, but I'll probably buy it anyway to be able to see it without that crap trailer music :p

[MrBooth]

Well, got it and saw it, and - predictably - Tony Jaa is in the film for about 5 minutes, most of which you see in the trailer. Still, he pulls some great moves, and it really was worth the price to see it without the crappy trailer music :-p

The film is more of a showcase for Panna Ritikrai, even though he's the main villain... and a mute zombie villain at that. The rest of the cast is an ensemble, with groups of Thai, Chinese and Japanese characters (all _blatantly_ played by a Thai cast) converging on a village just as Panna appears in the neighbourhood and starts killing people. They all end up going up against him, and he takes them on using the weapons and styles of each country. Tony is one of the Chinese group, though his style is less obviously wu-xia than some of the others in that group.

The plot for the film makes little sense, and has zero depth, and the film is ultra-low budget... though even a low budget can't excuse the lack of film-making savvy on display. It's primitive, crude and often quite comically bad. Acting is... just not a word that applies here... and some of the comedy is juvenile at best.

BUT, the film does feature a reasonabe amount of that trademark Panna Ritikrai full-contact action. The fight with Tony Jaa is definitely the highlight, but some of the other performers put up a good show too, and Panna himself is excellent. The film can in no way be compared to ONG BAK, BORN TO FIGHT or TOM YUM GOONG... it looks incredibly primitive and dated next to them, despite less than a decade separating them. It looks incredibly primitive next to pretty much anything in fact!

Still, it kept me mostly entertained for 90 minutes... a guilty pleasure, perhaps.

The disc itself is surprisingly good. The print does look scratched/faded in places, but in other looks quite sharp and detailed - it's a good anamorphic transfer from limited souirce materials, I would say. The film offers dub and sub options, and the subtitles are pretty good - as much as they can be for such blatantly inane dialogue :-p I saw the phrase "shagging" in there, so I guess BCI are porting a British disc, as with the Rarescope titles? I didn't sample the English dub, though since the original Thai post-dubbing is so lousy it's probably not going to suffer further from dubbing in another language, so maybe I should.

Haven't sampled the 2nd disc yet, which promises a "best of Panna fights" section. That's probably how his earlier films are best seen, from what I've seen so far. Hope they don't stick lousy "trailer music" over the footage though.


Heh, guess I should turn this into a proper review :-p

[Gaijin84]

Heh, guess I should turn this into a proper review :-p

Do I see the Thai Movie Database starting to be developed?

btw, i just bought www.thmdb.com