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Feb. 18th, 2005 09:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
molly_oLast night Mark and I saw the most awesome movie: Ong Bak. It's a Thai martial arts movie, and I went in with fairly low expectations, but I was Blown Away.
You know that moment in [one of the Rings movies, I can't remember if it's The Two Towers or The Return of the King -- yeah, I'm lame, take away my fan card] when Legolas swoops himself up onto the back of a galloping horse, and the whole audience gasps? The first chase scene in this movie (and when I say chase scene, there were no cars involved, this was just people running through the alleys of Bangkok) had at least a *dozen* moments like that, moments that matched, if not *exceeded*, Legolas' move for grace and athleticism -- and with NO computer-generated effects, NO wire-fu, just this one guy (Panom Yeerum, a stunt-man-turned-actor who excels at muay thai, a thai martial art) being AWESOME.
The movie definitely has an unpolished feel -- it's very *earnest*, and has a seriousness of purpose I wasn't expecting from a kickboxing movie -- but the lack of cool is very charming, especially when there's a really cool stunt and they show it again from a different angle (you can almost hear them saying, "how great was that?? let's see it again!") and sometimes, if it's a REALLY dramatic stunt, they'll show it *again*, from a *third* angle, because it's Just That Cool.
You know that moment in [one of the Rings movies, I can't remember if it's The Two Towers or The Return of the King -- yeah, I'm lame, take away my fan card] when Legolas swoops himself up onto the back of a galloping horse, and the whole audience gasps? The first chase scene in this movie (and when I say chase scene, there were no cars involved, this was just people running through the alleys of Bangkok) had at least a *dozen* moments like that, moments that matched, if not *exceeded*, Legolas' move for grace and athleticism -- and with NO computer-generated effects, NO wire-fu, just this one guy (Panom Yeerum, a stunt-man-turned-actor who excels at muay thai, a thai martial art) being AWESOME.
The movie definitely has an unpolished feel -- it's very *earnest*, and has a seriousness of purpose I wasn't expecting from a kickboxing movie -- but the lack of cool is very charming, especially when there's a really cool stunt and they show it again from a different angle (you can almost hear them saying, "how great was that?? let's see it again!") and sometimes, if it's a REALLY dramatic stunt, they'll show it *again*, from a *third* angle, because it's Just That Cool.