Highlights of Ong Bak II

[badgerbag]

Cute as hell elephants!

Halllucinatory Thai dance scene on a riverbank...

Totally gratuitous, mostly nonlinear speedboat chase with explosions and guys flying through the air, on fire.

Scruffy animal rights activists!

Australian thugs with tiny bikes and skateboards and rollerblades, wielding fluorescent light tubes, in an amazing fight scene in an old warehouse full of art cars!

Tony Jaa doing pretty much anything. But especially walking up walls and doing backflips.

Giant, giant, amazing steadycam long shot, certainly over 10 minutes of continuous fighting and stunts, up the spiralling stairs of a fancy hotel! Deliberately made to look like a video game, first person fighter style.

Villain riding a Segway!!!! Segway chase scene!

I love this movie!

Capoeira dude, shirtless, in the burning flooded temple. An amazing fight!

The ridiculous fight with the bald giant in the golden elephant room. Tony Jaa walks up the giant's face just like he walks up walls.

The carpet of guys in black suits - writhing around with broken arms. Great fights but very hard to watch as the muay thai arm-breakings, with screaming and celery noises, are beyond squicky.

Comments

[jambery.livejournal.com]

I loved this movie! Especially the capoeira fight. And the elephants.

[jhkim.livejournal.com]

It was indeed filled with super-cool stuff. I was slightly disappointed by the ending, in that I thought the prior fights (like the capoeira fighter and the rollerblading punks) were much cooler. A martial arts fight where you need CGI to explain what's going on (the ligament-tearing) isn't worth it's stuff.

Things I learned from it:

1) Keep your baby elephant on a leash in a crowd.
2) Corruption is bad in Thailand, but good in Australia.
3) For god's sake, don't eat endangered species. That's just dumb.
4) Leave your baby elephant at a friend's when you assault the evil HQ.
5) When facing people four times heavier than you, think of using weapons before you're beaten to a pulp.