sdfgTony Jaa is the kung fu Christ. He's the muay thai messiah. If I saw footage of Tony Jaa walking across water, I would have no problem believing it was true. Especially if he nailed a guy on the head with his elbow at the end of the walk.

Jaa is the star of Ong-Bak: Thai Warrior, a title which might make you think he's playing Ong-Bak. Actually, he's playing Ting, the Thai Warrior of the subhead. Ong-Bak is a Buddha statue whose head has been stolen. Ting must travel to Bangkok to find it.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the plot of Ong-Bak: Thai Warrior. What it's missing in complexity, though, is made up for some of the best and most astonishing martial arts and stunts you will see this or any year.

When I was a kid I watched karate movies on channel 5 here in New York, all weekend long (just one of the many things that the members of the Wu Tang Clan and I have in common). I would be amazed by the incredible jumps and moves these guys could do - I would later come to understand that they were using wires. Ong-Bak brings me back to that feeling of amazement, but this time there are no gimmicks. Ong-Bak has no wires or CGI assisted battles. This is just Tony Jaa, come to save our martial arts souls.

Now you're probably saying to yourself "This is a movie with minimal plotting and maximum fight scenes. Isn't this supposed to be the kind of movie Devin hates? Shouldn't he be writing 4000 words on some indie hitting thirty theaters?" Yes! But while Ong-Bak has the surface appearance of everything that's wrong with modern mainstream filmmaking, it has one thing none of those big action movies have - heart.

Ong-Bak is a scrappy movie. It wants one thing, and that's to make you sit in the theater going "ooh" and "ahh." That might be two things, but the principal is the same. And it delivers. Tony Jaa delivers. The film is full of great stunts and awesome action, stuff that gets you excited, the exact opposite of the repetitive and uninspiring shoot-outs and explosions of blockbuster Hollywood action movies. If watching the latest rote action extravaganza is like masturbating after a bad date, Ong-Bak is like fucking the prom queen, to borrow a quote from one of those passionless monstrosities. (By the way, imagine a world where "Ong-Bak is like fucking the prom queen!" was the lead quote on all the posters for the movie)

The thing that really elevates Ong-Bak is the lack of effects. There's a purity to the action that isn't all that far from watching an exhibition sport, except that in one scene Tony Jaa hits a guy on the head so hard his skull goes up, Zapruder style. OK, that's probably a bad example because it was obviously a make-up effect (I don't think the Thai stuntmen are THAT hardcore), but the point I'm trying to get across is that the movie is brutal. People get their asses essentially surgically removed and then handed to them. But there's something about Jaa that makes these beatings anything but cruel. He's almost angelic, a monkish presence who fights because that's the only option anyone gives him.

Jaa's just full of a quiet charisma. He's lithe, and his character is a country bumpkin so he doesn't get a lot of wisecracks and he doesn't swagger like a tough guy. He isn�t the burned out martial arts vet dragged into a fight, he's the excited young kid who just graduated muay thai school and he's ready to help out. He'd rather ask you politely for Ong-Bak's head back, but if you�re going to make him punch you so hard your motorcycle helmet will split in two - well, he can do it that way too.

At the risk of getting overly serious and snotty in a review like this, what I like about the freshness and desire to help Jaa exhibits is that in American films too many of our action heroes are guys who want nothing to do with whatever problem they have to deal with, who get drawn into the conflict despite their urge to be left alone. That says a lot about the perennial American isolationist stance, and even more about America post-Vietnam. And Jaa isn't some kind of modern American pre-emptive strike action hero, either. He's not pro-active about going after the bad guys, but he gives better than he gets. It would feel corny if the movie was Americanized, with a rural kid heading to New York and doling out some kung fu justice (and by the way, I know I'm using the names of different disciplines of martial arts from different countries interchangeably), but with the subtitles it just feels fun.

Ong-Bak is aggressive about getting its job done. There are moments in the film that are silly, or just plain stupid, and I can see how some of the secondary characters could grate on people's nerves (I loved them, feeling that they fit right in with the general atmosphere), and there's a chase sequence that just didn't do it for me, but otherwise I defy anyone to see this film in a crowded theater and not get caught up in the energy and the excitement. The polar opposite of the mannered wuxia movies we've been getting lately, Ong-Bak feels like The Sex Pistols to House of Flying Dagger's Pink Floyd. Sure, there's room in your record collection for both, but sometimes it's nice to just enjoy something primal and raw and fun.

8.8 out of 10