Occasionally, money from the film stuff dries up and I must make ends meet by dealing fine silks and heroin. These pursuits often take me far away from my American cradle, thrusting me instead into exotic, sometimes dangerous lands filled with human beings of infinite variety.
One of these crazy countries really stuck with me. Over here, we know it as Asia, but the area’s native tongue actually calls itself Thailand (pronounced Thigh-Land, as in, opposite of Wing-land). Here men and women called Asians, or Thailanders if you prefer, live life very much like we do in America, except they are all super skinny short people trained to kick each other’s asses in the most artistic fashion possible. To Asians, fighting is like McDonald’s (everyone does it) but also like The Olive Garden (classy as shit).
As soon as I discovered this rich, action-packed cultural heritage, I knew I had to exploit it for a film just like I did that time I found that giant ape. I hired as many Thailanders as I could and began working on a new genre of film called Kung-fu. I worked fast and cheap because I couldn’t wait to show it to my stateside friends, Quentin Tarantino and Mr. Wachowski Brothers. My awesome new invention would be called Ong-bac, which translates into English as: OUCH-bac.
No one in their right mind would waste time writing an original story for this film, and since I am always in my right mind I failed to waste that time and instead simply ripped-off the film Twins.
So there is this simple village on the outskirts of a major Thailandic city. The village has no technology or anything like that. They are quiet people who dutifully worship a fat, bald, smiley Jesus Christ statue. Because they live their lives untouched by the modern outside world, we have a real Garden of Eden innocence going on which you can call stupidity if you really want to be a dick about it.
The village believes in non-violent solutions to problems, but just in case, they’ve been training a town badass named Ong-bac. When the film begins, his twenty-year training ordeal has finally come to an end. “We taught you this,” his master says. “But you must never use it.” Ong-bac’s totally okay with that, and so are we because everyone knows it’s bullshit. You don’t spend twenty years learning Kung-fu just to grow bamboo for the rest of your life. Asses are going to be split down the middle; it’s just a matter of when.
We don’t have to wait too long (actually we kind of do). Someone from the outside world enters the village looking for money. When he finds none, he cuts off the village Jesus Christ head and takes that instead. This pisses the village off enough to send Ong-bac out into the real world in order to kick ass and get head.
The first thing he does is find his excommunicated cousin, played by Danny Devito. Everything to this dirtbag is a con or a gamble of some sort because he’s been corrupted by the real world. And he has a ponytail. As soon as he makes Ong-bac for a naive sucker, he begins using his badassness for monetary gain. Ong-bac wants no part in his shenanigans, but cannot help getting cheated because he’s such an innocent turd. Everywhere he looks, people are trying to fuck him in the bac.
But never fear! There just so happens to be an underground fighting ring, which just so happens to be run by the wheelchair tracheotomy dude who hired the head-stealing dude. This means that Danny Devito can get Ong-bac to fight while also moving Ong-bac closer to the dude he needs to kill. Downtown this sort of plotting is what we call “Shakespeare Who?”
And so finally, after about forty minutes of fucking around, we get to see Ong-bac fight. To call it awesome is sort of an insult to awesome. Basically, Ong-bac’s rigorous training has taught him to turn his entire body into an elbow, and he uses that elbow to turn your entire body into a dull stab wound.
He’s also good at air-kicking. Like, instead of just jump-kicking you like a sane person, Ong-bac will do two back flips kicking you in the face with both feet each time. That means his feet left the earth and you got kicked four times before they touched ground again.
Ong-bac is fearless and cannot feel pain. If he thinks it might help, he WILL set his leg on fire and kick you with it. He WILL skewer his hand with a knife and slap your mouth. A circle of barbwire might stop a regular action guy, but Ong-bac will jump THROUGH it, and not just head-first like a Dandy, but touching his toes like a lethally sharp letter C.
Face it, people. Ong-bac stopped pooping a long time ago.
As his awesome fighting gets the entire underworld interested, tracheotomy crime boss and Danny Devito must work together to keep him violently occupied. This proves difficult because of his small village upbringing. What they figure out is, Ong-boc will fight if A) Danny tells him the fight club is where he will find the Jesus Christ head. It does not matter how many times this is proven false; he will always fall for it. B) Tracheotomy bad guy has Ong-boc’s opponent threaten a woman. Ong-bac doesn’t care if it’s the same woman over and over again. He will ALWAYS fight in the name of chivalry.
I could go on, but what else do you need to know? There are fist fights, feet fights, stick fights, and go-cart fights. Ong-bac gets the Jesus Christ head back for his village. He’s like a giant hero, but he doesn’t care because true heroes aren’t supposed to care about that sort of shit. He doesn’t get married or anything like that because, from what I can tell, Asian men who know Kung-fu do not reproduce sexually or find women attractive even. You may stick your nose up at that and call it weird, but we should all strive to achieve a relative look at all cultures. Just because they are different doesn’t not make them lesser foreigners.
ps. I’m thinking about making a sequel where Ong-bac’s granddaddy fights elephants. And then a third movie where he must babysit a baby.