Holy Kick Ass!
Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior is a little miracle-a defiantly old-fashioned martial-arts picture focused on choreography and prowess rather than computer-generated imagery and wire stunts. Its only special effect is its leading man, Tony Jaa, a Muay Thai master whose hard, long-limbed body seems to have been carved out of teak. He's not an exciting movie star and he's not much of an actor, either.
Yet these deficiencies don't damage the film because it's built around Jaa's singular talent: acrobatic ass-kicking. When Jaa soars through the air, using his fists, feet, elbows and shins to break ribs and shatter skulls, director Prachya Pinkaew keeps the camera low to the ground and shoots the mayhem from two or three meters back, with a wide-angle lens, to better showcase his star's awesome physical control. He even repeats Jaa's most spectacular moves two or three times from different angles, an instant-replay affectation popularized by Jackie Chan, Jean-Claude Van Damme and other old-school martial arts icons. (It's the martial arts movie's way of saying, "See, folks-no cheating!")
As hero Ting-a sweet country bumpkin searching for a stolen religious artifact in Bangkok-Jaa has fewer lines than Kurt Russell in Soldier. He's like a hooded falcon awaiting orders to fly. And when he flies, he really flies, hurdling car roofs, chain link fences and other conveniently placed obstructions. (A foot chase through a bustling marketplace is filled with so many "random" obstacles that it threatens to turn into a Zucker-Abraham-Zucker parody of foot chases; at one point, some guys cross Ting's path carrying a two-foot-diameter hoop made out of barbed wire, and Ting dives through it like a porpoise.)
Suphachai Sithiamphan's script has a compelling, simple plot: A henchman employed by a Bangkok crime boss decapitates a Buddha statue in Ting's village and brings it to his master in the city, an act of thievery and vandalism that endangers the village's collective spiritual life force (à la "Temple of Doom"). Ting is sent to Bangkok to set things right. The unexpectedly quirky backup cast includes a motorbike-riding tomboy named Muay Lek (Pumwaree Yodkamol) and a wiseass blond-haired hustler (Petchthai Wongkamlao) originally from Ting's hometown, but who renounced his bumpkin heritage and changed his name from Dirty Balls to George. (Wouldn't you?)
In stark contrast to most action pictures, Ong Bak has a serious, globally relevant theme-the displacement of ancient spiritual traditions by secular, materialist influences-and articulates it with comic-book pizzazz. "I don't revere lumps of stone like you do? I revere only myself," says the film's villain (Suchao Pongwilai), an underground-fight-club-betting, wheelchair-confined, throat-cancer-scarred bad guy whose voice synthesizer sounds like Peter Frampton's talk box in "Do You Feel Like We Do."
The script contrasts the godless selfishness of Bangkok's underworld-epitomized in a scene where a prostitute begs her pimp to let her quit drugs, and the pimp responds by rubbing powdered heroin all over her mouth and face-with the village's communal instinct, spiritual devotion and willful innocence. Pinkaew foregrounds this cultural contrast (and converts his leading man's passivity into strength) by associating Ting's introspective stillness with Buddhism and positioning him as an incorruptible, modern-day holy warrior, fighting bad guys who treat faith as a scam and tradition as a source of plunder.
This association becomes explicit in the film's climactic showdown, which crosscuts between Ting and George battling an army of foes and artifact thieves' attempts to decapitate a giant Buddha statue. There's even an audacious cut from a close-up of the battered Ting to a similarly lit and framed close-up of the endangered Buddha head. The profiles are similar.
Ong Bak will never be mistaken for a technical or esthetic masterpiece. There are some slackly paced scenes, oversold sight gags and contrived stunts; an extended chase sequence with low-speed mini-taxis soon becomes tedious, and the camerawork and editing are mostly prosaic rather than poetic. Yet the film is electrifying anyway because of the pop context in which it appears. After a decade's worth of wire-and-software-assisted action epics, Ong Bak feels like a revolution-or at the very least a restoration, a return to a genre's roots. Hard, loud, messy and passionate, it's the Ramones of martial arts pictures.
Hitch
Directed by Andy Tennant
From James Stewart and Sidney Poitier through Robert Redford and Tom Hanks, even the most pleasant and accessible movie stars have still managed to convey a bit of an edge-a hint of melancholy, bitterness, anger; a glimmer of chaos. Will Smith has none of these qualities. Even his most intriguingly complex performances-in Six Degrees of Separation and Ali-could not be called dangerous. Smith is leading man as product, clean and shiny and 100 percent edge-free-a human spoon, suitable for use by everyone from seen-it-all seniors to applesauce-gobbling infants.
In the Valentine's Day gambit Hitch, Smith plays Alex Hitchens, a dating expert who advises love-challenged men. Don't worry, ladies-he gives advice on how to be romantic and decent, not on how to get laid (though the movie makes sure to let you know he has no trouble in the latter department). As Hitch's counterpart Sara Melas, a cynical, scoop-chasing gossip columnist, Eva Mendes matches Smith in utterly proficient dullness. She gives her standard performance: competent and likable but completely forgettable, like the movie. "You are a realist masquerading as a cynic who is secretly an optimist," says Sara's editor (Adam Arkin). Most of the screenplay-credited to Kevin Bisch-is this boringly literal; it comes to conclusions so you don't have to.
The script has a promising subtext that likens lovers' dreams of romantic acceptance to immigrants' dreams of reinvention and assimilation-an idea lightly teased in a scene where Hitch takes Sara to Ellis Island. But the movie's too frothy, unimaginative and materialistic to bother going there; it's more interested in product placement for Google, Altoids, Grey Goose Vodka, and in showcasing the stars' palatial apartments. Smith and Mendes are a romantic goose egg, but the leading man clicks with King of Queens star Kevin James, who plays one of Hitch's basket-case clients, Albert Brennaman, an accountant who dreams of winning the heart of a sexy socialite, Allegra Cole (Amber Valletta). Hitch condescends to Albert by making him completely hopeless-a slack-jawed, food-spilling, spastic-dancing dork. Yet Smith and James' clowning-capped by a dandy bit scene where Hitch insists that Albert demonstrate his kissing technique without actually kissing Hitch-is so sweet and goofy that it lifts the movie's spirits for all of three minutes.