After Ong Bak, Tony Jaa has moved onto much better things with his latest film Tom Yum Goong, or The Warrior King as it is known here in the U.K.In his first UK film the story involved Tony recovering a stolen Buddha. In this film its two elephants that are stolen by a restaurant who want to serve the pachyoderms on their menu, well it's different from a woman being kidnapped I guess. To restore his family's honour he has to kick everyone's arse to get his elephants back.
As with District 13 the story really doesn't matter, it's the action sequences that you'd be going to see, and man are they something else! One of the sequences is the longest single-take fight sequence that runs for about 5 minutes as he makes his way up several floors of the restaurant laying waste to just about everyone in his way (even better when you realise it took about 10 attempts to get right). Another sequence has him battling guys on inline skates, skateboards, bmxs, motor bikes and a quad bike, and another has him clinically displaying how to break just about every bone in the body as he takes on about 30 guys.
But the best sequence by far is where he is fighting three guys in a church on fire, especially the sequence with the Capoeira fighter where the guy looks and moves just like Eddy Gordo in Tekken, the sequence with the wrestler is also impressive. Absolutely brilliant choreography throughout.
Some of the dialogue is hilariously bad and Tony Jaa can't act for toffee, but you forgive that because the fight sequences are so good. The film will leave you breathless, the first to do that for a long long time.
Oh, and the Jackie Chan cameo in this film is actually using a look-a-like.
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