I’ll put it as simply as possible: if you’ve grown weary of all the exaggerated high-flying wire-fu and rubbery digital foolishness in action movies and just want to see old-school fighting and stuntmen being brutally punished in increasingly unnatural ways, you need to see the bone-crushing Thai martial arts flick Ong Bak.
Star Tony Jaa (aka Phanom Yeerum) may not be as handsome or charismatic as Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan, but the guy has blinding speed and such physics-defying acrobatic skill that you’ll feel like you should have an Xbox controller in your hand. Jaa stars as a naïve villager who travels to the big city to recover a sacred artifact. Along the way he runs afoul of local gangsters, and uses Muay Thai kickboxing to knock the shit out of pretty much everyone. The flick hits US screens early next year.