Brave (Thailand 2008)

"Whoa! Now that the truth is revealed, get ready to go to hell!"

Brave (กล้าหยุดโลก) is a film attempting to do what Hong Kong martial-arts cinema God Jackie Chan did the best in the late eighties and nineties. Basically, take action with an unlikely hero that uses the environments, wit, and charisma to outshine his opponents. So does Brave have what it takes to bring us all back to that classic time? Maybe.

B (Pairote Boongerd), is a young guy thats forced by the biggest mafia gang in Thailand to steal client information from Wealthy Bank, an international credit card company. He shows up "looking for a job" and makes his way in. Once inside, he places some calls for a ton of food to be delivered to the various businesses within the building. After taking care of some martial-arts experts/credit-card call center workers, B finds Lita (Supakson Chaimongkon), the company's vice president, and forces her to give him the password that will allow him to finish his assignment. With the cops everywhere, he's bound to mix it up with at least a few of them and still manages to find enough time to sneak away disguised as a food delivery driver. Now B has the data he can use to negotiate the release of his brother Tong (Afdlin Shauki), who has been captured, tortured, and held hostage by this gang. So B goes to rescue him and make the switch, but the gang sets up the old double-cross, "rig your buddy with explosives trap", in an attempt to kill both B and Tong.

Later, the mob boss Kovit (Sahaschai Chumrum), finds out that B and Tong are still alive, so he sends waves of gang members to finish the two off, as well as B's former best friend Mia. Meanwhile, Lita's husband, the CEO of Wealthy Bank, takes his own life due to the embarrassing and disrespectful loss that his company has experienced. B and Tong find out about this man taking his life and feel nothing but guilt because of it. They try to find Lita to explain that B was just a pawn in this gangs evil plan, but when they get to her home, they find that the gang has already arrived.

There are things going on in Brave that will really make you want to like it, but sadly, there are also too many red flags that get raised to let you. As with most action movies, the action taking place is definitely the film's selling point, but in the search for the perfect action movie, the narrative is always the one part getting the short end of the stick, and Brave is no exception. It has these odd sub-plots that keep rearing their ugly heads and sends the viewer into mass confusion. So really, you'll just end up ignoring them and continue waiting for more action. At times, the acting is passable. The bad guys say as little as possible and mostly stand there looking menacing. The "sidekick" (Tong), overacts and gets exciting about everything, while Lita cries a lot and seems to question everything that happens. B does his best Jackie Chan impression, from the smiling, light-hearted, good-guy antics, down to the facial reactions he uses to "sell" his pain during the fights. It's not a bad thing per se, but he just has to make all of this his own, and it seems a bit sacrilegious to play on the masters work.

Now, as for the fighting and the stunt work in Brave, I will say that this stunt crew takes some pretty darn good bumps and falls. Just about every scene has a slew of guys flying through something or falling from way too high up, which is always a treat to see. The use of an old building sets up an exciting jump that Pairote Boongerd takes, and it does that classic martial-arts "double-take" replay, and yeah...it's worth it. The fights as a whole do a good job of gradually getting better as the film progresses, with the best being saved for the climax. Seasoned fans will notice that some of the choreography could have been a little tighter at times in order to keep a better flow during some fights. Other than that, most scenes were quite entertaining and you can really tell that the action was the main focus. So is the Thai martial-arts action film on par with Hong Kong martial-arts action? No. Is it headed in the right direction? With a little help and time, I'd say so. (CBKevin)

Fighting Beat aka: Pahuyut Muay Thai Chaiy (Thailand 2007)

"Why the hell these guys use Muay Thai moves I never seen before, goddamn it"?!

As Thailand slowly finds it's bearing in the cinematic world, we, as lovers of foreign film get to share their successes and unfortunately their failures. Fighting Beat does one of these better than the other.

Phi Phi Island is a tropical paradise that holds an exciting bar that keeps the drinks flowing Muay Thai action hot, which keeps the foreigners happy as they spend all of their money on the festivities. This is also home to Kem (Thun Thanakorn) and his friend. They work at the bar serving drinks and letting random customers beat them in controlled fighting matches. When they lose, the customer is then encouraged to give a tip for the hospital care they have to receive for the harsh beating. Even though they're just taking a fall in order to earn some quick cash, Kem is haunted by the fact that his father was murdered in this same location years ago which left him as an orphan residing at a local temple. Under the watchful eye of his new caregiver, Kem begins to learn the ways of Muay Thai. However, things hit a snag as a group of thugs come in and want to buy the bar from the owner, Uncle Praow. Praow immediately makes it known that he isn't interested in selling. Naturally, the thugs try to take the bar by force, but are swiftly defeated by Kem and his friends. The thugs later return to their boss to report their failed attempt, but the boss isn't too concerned as he has a friend who's just gotten himself out of jail and he just happens to be the man who killed Kem's father.

When I first saw the poster for Fighting Beat, my eyes widened and my heart went a flutter. I had been looking for a balls-out slug-fest to hold me over until, "Chocolate" comes out. I actually thought to myself, "this is it." The cover alone reminded me of the 16-bit beat 'em up games of yesteryear like, "Streets of Rage", "Final Fight", and so on. So needles to say, I was eager to watch this one. The carnal rule, at least for me, when it comes to movie-watching, especially foreign films, is to expect nothing and hopefully be pleasantly surprised. If you don't follow this rule, you end up with the same feeling I had after watching Fighting Beat...sadness.

At second glance, Fighting Beat comes off like a teen Thai pop vehicle that's meant to use these multi-talented entertainment forces (i.e. Twins, Boyz) to bring in a younger audience, but even that didn't work because the movie tanked at the box office. That being said, it's left to stand on it's own merits which is where Fighting Beat does just about everything wrong that you can do in a "martial-arts" movie. The lead actor can not fight at all. He can barely mimic some kicks and jumps, and I understand that trying to show authentic Muay Thai is what the director is striving for, but Thun Thanakorn looks as if he's never heard of it. Hell, I'm not even sure director Piti Jaturaphat has heard of it, because he presents it in the most uninteresting way possible. The supporting cast is as lame as he is, if not more so. Are they supposed to be funny comic-relief or bad-ass Muay Thai students? It doesn't matter because they can't seem to be either. The women in the group are pretty hot, but that's about it. The acting is god-awful, especially when they attempt to act in English. The story is paper thin and on the wrong side of retarded, leaving you to wonder why things didn't move away from the bar within the first thirty minutes. Do these guys do anything with their beach-bum lives other than hustle foreigners? Well I guess it doesn't matter, because if you're the foreigner wasting time watching this; consider yourself hustled. (converter)



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The official Fighting Beat website *In Thai

Dynamite Warrior (Thailand 2006)

Welcome to 1890 Siam, Thailand where the northern land rice fields are under great pressure to produce their chief export. To keep up with the growth of the rice, they use animals such as buffalo to help them with the harvest. This resulted in the in the merchants having to transport the buffalo to the northeast. They were known as the "Nai Hoi". With this being the way of life for these people, bandits would often appear and steal from the farms in order to make money. Jone Bang Fai (Dan Chupong), is on a quest to find the man marked with a tattoo that did the same thing to his village and in the process killed his parents. He stops the band of thieves with homemade rockets (used in ceremonies to pray for rain), and his deadly Muay Thai. Jone then returns the buffalo to their rightful owners. Meanwhile, a local nobleman by the name of Lord Waeng (Leo Putt), represents a foreign company that wants to introduce the steam tractor to the local farmers. And after a failed attempt to win them over, he hires The Thief (Somdet Kaew-ler), to steal the buffalo so that he can force the need of his tractor's. The Thief is successful until he runs across a man named Nai Hoi Singh (Samart Payakarun), a cattle trader with supernatural martial-arts powers and a certain tattoo on his chest. After hearing about Singh's powers and the defeat of The Thief, Waeng incites the help of the dastardly Black Wizard (Panna Rittikrai), to help trick Jone Bang Fai into beating Singh.

The one thing that stands out the most in the comic bookish tale that is Dynamite Warrior, is the action. If you're a fan of martial-arts action, than the action and the action alone is the sole reason you should watch this movie. The stunts, bumps, hits and falls that these actors take are simply great. I would just smile and grimace a little when they would hit an unforgiving wall, box, dresser, or even buffalo. Not to mention when the always present flying-knee would land across someones forehead. Of course when you have a hero that uses rockets (more like over-sized bottle rockets), you're going to get the CG. And with supernatural powers, you're going to get the wire-work. "Notice, it's not wire-fu because those fights are real", says director Chalerm Wongpim. The story in Dynamite Warrior is just okay, and it didn't seem too ridiculous when Chupong rides on top of a rocket like a surfboard. That's because I knew when he was done riding, someone was getting a knee to the head...and hard. There are a few laughs that completely work and the acting does it's job in moving the story along. All of this is what made Dynamite Warrior such a fun ride for me. So let's get Dan Chupong and Tony Jaa together in an action film as, "Buddies of the Flying Tiger Knee", so all can be right with the world. And yes, I knew Chupong was in Ong-Bak as a bodyguard. (Converter)



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Scared (Thailand 2005)

Phii May (Sumonrat Wattanaselarat), is leaving home for her freshman year at college. To celebrate the arrival of a new student, a trip is planned. While going through the rain forest, the bus full of kids come across a small outpost where a local warns them that they can't take the road ahead of them and that they'd best go home. Outraged, the group of kids are interrupted by a mysterious stranger who says he'll show them the way for a ride. Once inside the rain forest, the landscape reveals various odd shrines and an old, long bridge that the bus attempts to cross. Less than halfway across the bridge, it begins to break and the bus falls into the river, killing half of the kids on board. The survivors disperse and find a small abandoned town just in
time to find out that someone is responsible for killing the students off.

Pakphum Wonjinda brings us a "teen slasher" movie that does a few things right, and does it's best to spice up it respected genre. The deaths of the kids are quite gory, which is a plus, and you do get a pretty high body count. When the killing starts, the kids start dropping like house flies! The atmosphere of the deep rain forest, followed by the small town, does its part in creating a hopeless, lonely feeling for the cast. The characters are incredibly one-dimensional, which is fine due to the fact you don't get enough time to figure out who is who anyway! So don't look for any character development here. The plot isn't a brain teaser by any means, it simply gets the kids to where the killing takes place, but it does try to spice things up at the end. If you're a fan of teen slasher films, horror, or just want to see some original deaths, you might find something to smile about in Scared. (Converter)