THE DUKE ON ONG-BAK
Any serious student of motion-film will tell you, should you bother
to ask, that most likely, the only thing lacking in, say, La Règle
du jeu or Roma, città aperta, is that there were nowhere near
enough shots of folks getting hit in the face with elbows and knees.
Any half-arsed motherfucker can punch a drug-lord or shove a boot
into the teeth of an international terrorist, but it takes someone
special for to maybe bound through the air and elbow a man so hard
on the head that the very skull cracks under the weight. And then
again and again, on account of the really cool bits get replays.
Ong-Bak, Prachya Pinkaew’s 2003 opus of limb-snapping and head-
crushing, has more elbow and knee action than any flick this side
of, say, Brief Encounter, with its famous scene wherein Celia
Johnson jumped the hell off a train-roof and shoved her right elbow
into Trevor Howard’s yap so hard his shoulders split the fuck in
two.
It does for elbows and knees what Say Anything did for big-arse
tape-deck things held above a fella’s head in the hope that a lady-
friend might, by some miraculous development, find some horrible
Peter Gabriel recording sexually-arousing. I ain’t ever in my life
seen elbows and knees utilized with such artistic flair since back
in the day when Da Vinci was scribbling all over a buncha yellowed
note-pads, back before he turned out to be Mary Magdalene or
whatever the fuck that book yacks on about.
In case you didn’t know, what Ong-Bak concerns itself with, is
something along the lines of this shit right here;
A young fella by the name of Ting leaves his tranquil rural village
for to head off into the seedy lady-boy infested streets of
Bangkok, that he might recover the head of a Buddha statue that
some criminal type has done gone stolen.
He meets up with a fella by the name of Dirty Balls, who has
understandably changed his name to George in the days since he knew
Ting, and the two of them get involved in awe-inspiring set-piece
after awe-inspiring set-piece.
Also, there’s a lady who appears to be Dirty Balls’ lover, but I
don’t recall that anyone ever confirms my suspicion. Put it down to
bitter experience that’s gone an warped a fella’s view of the
world, but what The Duke would guess is that if a lass is spending
a lot of time in a fella’s company, even a fella with ridiculous
bleached hair and a name like Dirty Balls, she’s probably closer to
him than she’ll admit. But who knows, maybe they just hang out and
scam gangsters, and maybe never even once got naked in the same
room. Thankfully it don’t matter a frosted fuck, since it’s all
about Ting.
Ting, it transpires, is something of a motherfucking genius type
when it comes to the art of Muay Thai boxing, i.e., boxing that
involves feet, elbows, knees, tables, taxi cabs, in addition to the
ol’ left-hook an such. Turns out this is handy as all hell, since
every corner these folks turn in their quest for the Buddha head,
there’s a buncha low-down sonsa bitches ready for to chase them
down streets or break stuff over heads or shove them into an
underground fighting den.
Ong-Bak is wonderful. In these days of CGI assisted pseudo-carnage,
there ain’t no words that don’t involve fuck for to describe how
amazing it is seeing folks genuinely getting flung off of trees the
size of houses. Folks landing on the dusty ground, and the thud of
spine-on-dirt, that right there kicks the pixellated arse of any
number of Matrixes or Underworlds or Constantines.
It doesn’t have a plot worth a flying gypsie’s fuck, it has a truly
abominable techno soundtrack, it has some unspeakably horrifying
hair-cuts, but dig this shit right here, would you ever?
1 - It’s the best searching for a missing head flick since that
Peckinpah number about Alfredo Garcia, and violent and gritty as
that picture may have been, it had not one scene that I can
remember all about maybe Warren Oates starts flinging his legs
around in the direction of some filthy criminal bastards, and all
the while his legs on fire.
2 - It has Tony Jaa.
This fella is a motherfucking revelation, bounding and jumping and
kneeing and elbowing and punching and kicking in a manner I ain’t
ever seen since that Jackie Chan flick were he did all the crazy
shit with the ladders. This Jaa motherfucker is incredible.
He don’t need no wires or CGI or stunt-doubles or special effects,
on account of he IS the special effect.
He leaps through tables, he runs up the sides of walls, he gets no
end of props smashed over his head, he jumps up in the air and
slams his knees around a fellas head, elbowing the fuck out his
skull, then leaps off in time for to give a swift kick to the teeth
before the bastard falls back in a pool of his own gunk.
He leaps and falls with abandon.
3 - It has two of the best chase sequences I’ve ever seen in my
damn life, let The Duke state for the record.
The first is like some shit out of a platform game from back in the
days when you just ran from one side of the screen to the other
jumping over shit without having to worry about any kind of plot or
the threat of a cut-scene all about The Government every ten
minutes.
I half expected magic rings or some shit to crop up, or
anthromorphized mushrooms.
Jaa just starts running along a street, being chased by a whole
fuckload of gangster types, and next thing anyone knows any and all
obstacles that could be flung in his way are flung with nary a
thought for sense or neo-realist leanings. If you thought there
weren’t no room in this day and age for a scene all about a fella
has to jump through strategically placed hoops of barbed wire in
the middle of a crowded street, or bound over any amount of stalls
and tables, or jump the fuck over a buncha motorbikes that appear
from out of nowhere, then you need to think the hell again.
The second involves a buncha three-wheeled taxi cabs. I ain't ever
seen taxi's get smashed up with such giddy invention.
4 – It has the most memorable limb-snapping since Irreversible, and
it won’t make you feel like a filthy scum-soaked bastard fresh out
the gutter with a crack-pipe in one hand and a diseased penis in
the other.
5 – It’s the flick Kickboxer 2 coulda been.
There ain’t much in the world for to get a man jumpin up and down
before a movie screen like the sight of a young fella suddenly
beating the frazzled fuck out a man three times his size, and all
in the presence of a crowd hopped to the last nut on bloodthirsty
abandon.
Kickboxer nailed that sensation right there, but for whatever
reason, Kickboxer 2 just didn’t deliver that same kickbox to the
giddy glands.
And if you thought Kickboxer 3 – The Art Of War might’ve made up
for it, you can think the fuck again.
This here Ong-Bak malarkey, though, it gets it perfect. When it
flings Tony Jaa into the middle of a fight with some demented
maniac screeching about “I’ll kill your guts out your head!!!!” or
whatever, the whole motherfucking thing scales the sortsa heights
you never thought you’d see scaled this side of Bloodsport.
6 – It’s got great baddies.
Whilst Ong-Bak lacks a Tong Po, it’s got plenty substitute
ne’er-do-wells for to get a man sneering and hissing, best of all
being a gangster head-honcho fella who sits in his wheelchair
smoking through a hole in his neck and giving out orders for to
kill motherfuckers left and right with one of those voice-box
machines you get on account of all the smoking.
Then there’s the crazy bastard who wants nothing more than to smash
chairs, tables, bottles over Tony Jaa’s hide.
Ong-Bak fucking rules, is all there is to it. Tell you the truth, I
wasn’t expecting a terrible lot. I’m a bit actioned-out to tell you
the whole truth and nothing but. How many times can you see a yap
get smacked before you start losing interest? Not many more, is the
answer.
Ong-Bak, however, makes a fella feel like he ain’t ever seen a lip
get split ever once before in his life. Also, it's incredibly
beautiful, like the opening tree-climbing contest, or the wonderful
moment when Ting discovers a whole host of underwater Buddhas.
It ain’t got much more to offer than Tony Jaa and a couple great
characters here and there, but that’s much, much more than
anybody's ever gonna need.
It’s the kung-fu flick equivalent of Guinea Pig – Mermaid In A
Manhole. That flick had some sort of narrative hidden away
someplace, but really, all it wanted to do was show a mermaid
puking out puss and maggots over a bath-tub for forty minutes.
Regardless of how flimsy the A to B may have been, you didn’t
forget that shit in a hurry, and I dare say only the most chronic
amnesiacs will forgot how Tony Jaa put a fella’s leg between his
own, jumped into the air and landed with all his force on the knee.
Thanks folks.
Fling The Duke An Email or Sign The Mondo Guestbook
to ask, that most likely, the only thing lacking in, say, La Règle
du jeu or Roma, città aperta, is that there were nowhere near
enough shots of folks getting hit in the face with elbows and knees.
Any half-arsed motherfucker can punch a drug-lord or shove a boot
into the teeth of an international terrorist, but it takes someone
special for to maybe bound through the air and elbow a man so hard
on the head that the very skull cracks under the weight. And then
again and again, on account of the really cool bits get replays.
Ong-Bak, Prachya Pinkaew’s 2003 opus of limb-snapping and head-
crushing, has more elbow and knee action than any flick this side
of, say, Brief Encounter, with its famous scene wherein Celia
Johnson jumped the hell off a train-roof and shoved her right elbow
into Trevor Howard’s yap so hard his shoulders split the fuck in
two.
It does for elbows and knees what Say Anything did for big-arse
tape-deck things held above a fella’s head in the hope that a lady-
friend might, by some miraculous development, find some horrible
Peter Gabriel recording sexually-arousing. I ain’t ever in my life
seen elbows and knees utilized with such artistic flair since back
in the day when Da Vinci was scribbling all over a buncha yellowed
note-pads, back before he turned out to be Mary Magdalene or
whatever the fuck that book yacks on about.
In case you didn’t know, what Ong-Bak concerns itself with, is
something along the lines of this shit right here;
A young fella by the name of Ting leaves his tranquil rural village
for to head off into the seedy lady-boy infested streets of
Bangkok, that he might recover the head of a Buddha statue that
some criminal type has done gone stolen.
He meets up with a fella by the name of Dirty Balls, who has
understandably changed his name to George in the days since he knew
Ting, and the two of them get involved in awe-inspiring set-piece
after awe-inspiring set-piece.
Also, there’s a lady who appears to be Dirty Balls’ lover, but I
don’t recall that anyone ever confirms my suspicion. Put it down to
bitter experience that’s gone an warped a fella’s view of the
world, but what The Duke would guess is that if a lass is spending
a lot of time in a fella’s company, even a fella with ridiculous
bleached hair and a name like Dirty Balls, she’s probably closer to
him than she’ll admit. But who knows, maybe they just hang out and
scam gangsters, and maybe never even once got naked in the same
room. Thankfully it don’t matter a frosted fuck, since it’s all
about Ting.
Ting, it transpires, is something of a motherfucking genius type
when it comes to the art of Muay Thai boxing, i.e., boxing that
involves feet, elbows, knees, tables, taxi cabs, in addition to the
ol’ left-hook an such. Turns out this is handy as all hell, since
every corner these folks turn in their quest for the Buddha head,
there’s a buncha low-down sonsa bitches ready for to chase them
down streets or break stuff over heads or shove them into an
underground fighting den.
Ong-Bak is wonderful. In these days of CGI assisted pseudo-carnage,
there ain’t no words that don’t involve fuck for to describe how
amazing it is seeing folks genuinely getting flung off of trees the
size of houses. Folks landing on the dusty ground, and the thud of
spine-on-dirt, that right there kicks the pixellated arse of any
number of Matrixes or Underworlds or Constantines.
It doesn’t have a plot worth a flying gypsie’s fuck, it has a truly
abominable techno soundtrack, it has some unspeakably horrifying
hair-cuts, but dig this shit right here, would you ever?
1 - It’s the best searching for a missing head flick since that
Peckinpah number about Alfredo Garcia, and violent and gritty as
that picture may have been, it had not one scene that I can
remember all about maybe Warren Oates starts flinging his legs
around in the direction of some filthy criminal bastards, and all
the while his legs on fire.
2 - It has Tony Jaa.
This fella is a motherfucking revelation, bounding and jumping and
kneeing and elbowing and punching and kicking in a manner I ain’t
ever seen since that Jackie Chan flick were he did all the crazy
shit with the ladders. This Jaa motherfucker is incredible.
He don’t need no wires or CGI or stunt-doubles or special effects,
on account of he IS the special effect.
He leaps through tables, he runs up the sides of walls, he gets no
end of props smashed over his head, he jumps up in the air and
slams his knees around a fellas head, elbowing the fuck out his
skull, then leaps off in time for to give a swift kick to the teeth
before the bastard falls back in a pool of his own gunk.
He leaps and falls with abandon.
3 - It has two of the best chase sequences I’ve ever seen in my
damn life, let The Duke state for the record.
The first is like some shit out of a platform game from back in the
days when you just ran from one side of the screen to the other
jumping over shit without having to worry about any kind of plot or
the threat of a cut-scene all about The Government every ten
minutes.
I half expected magic rings or some shit to crop up, or
anthromorphized mushrooms.
Jaa just starts running along a street, being chased by a whole
fuckload of gangster types, and next thing anyone knows any and all
obstacles that could be flung in his way are flung with nary a
thought for sense or neo-realist leanings. If you thought there
weren’t no room in this day and age for a scene all about a fella
has to jump through strategically placed hoops of barbed wire in
the middle of a crowded street, or bound over any amount of stalls
and tables, or jump the fuck over a buncha motorbikes that appear
from out of nowhere, then you need to think the hell again.
The second involves a buncha three-wheeled taxi cabs. I ain't ever
seen taxi's get smashed up with such giddy invention.
4 – It has the most memorable limb-snapping since Irreversible, and
it won’t make you feel like a filthy scum-soaked bastard fresh out
the gutter with a crack-pipe in one hand and a diseased penis in
the other.
5 – It’s the flick Kickboxer 2 coulda been.
There ain’t much in the world for to get a man jumpin up and down
before a movie screen like the sight of a young fella suddenly
beating the frazzled fuck out a man three times his size, and all
in the presence of a crowd hopped to the last nut on bloodthirsty
abandon.
Kickboxer nailed that sensation right there, but for whatever
reason, Kickboxer 2 just didn’t deliver that same kickbox to the
giddy glands.
And if you thought Kickboxer 3 – The Art Of War might’ve made up
for it, you can think the fuck again.
This here Ong-Bak malarkey, though, it gets it perfect. When it
flings Tony Jaa into the middle of a fight with some demented
maniac screeching about “I’ll kill your guts out your head!!!!” or
whatever, the whole motherfucking thing scales the sortsa heights
you never thought you’d see scaled this side of Bloodsport.
6 – It’s got great baddies.
Whilst Ong-Bak lacks a Tong Po, it’s got plenty substitute
ne’er-do-wells for to get a man sneering and hissing, best of all
being a gangster head-honcho fella who sits in his wheelchair
smoking through a hole in his neck and giving out orders for to
kill motherfuckers left and right with one of those voice-box
machines you get on account of all the smoking.
Then there’s the crazy bastard who wants nothing more than to smash
chairs, tables, bottles over Tony Jaa’s hide.
Ong-Bak fucking rules, is all there is to it. Tell you the truth, I
wasn’t expecting a terrible lot. I’m a bit actioned-out to tell you
the whole truth and nothing but. How many times can you see a yap
get smacked before you start losing interest? Not many more, is the
answer.
Ong-Bak, however, makes a fella feel like he ain’t ever seen a lip
get split ever once before in his life. Also, it's incredibly
beautiful, like the opening tree-climbing contest, or the wonderful
moment when Ting discovers a whole host of underwater Buddhas.
It ain’t got much more to offer than Tony Jaa and a couple great
characters here and there, but that’s much, much more than
anybody's ever gonna need.
It’s the kung-fu flick equivalent of Guinea Pig – Mermaid In A
Manhole. That flick had some sort of narrative hidden away
someplace, but really, all it wanted to do was show a mermaid
puking out puss and maggots over a bath-tub for forty minutes.
Regardless of how flimsy the A to B may have been, you didn’t
forget that shit in a hurry, and I dare say only the most chronic
amnesiacs will forgot how Tony Jaa put a fella’s leg between his
own, jumped into the air and landed with all his force on the knee.
Thanks folks.
Fling The Duke An Email or Sign The Mondo Guestbook
