WARRIOR- KING' THE PROTECTOR

Thailand, 2005,.81 minutes, Colour.
Tony Jaa, Nathan Jones.
Directed by Prachya Pinkaew.


A young fighter named Kham must go to Australia to retrieve his stolen elephant. With the help of a Thai-born Australian detective, Kham must take on all comers, including a gang led by an evil woman and her two deadly bodyguards.

Despite the fact that most of this film is ludicrous, poorly acted and ridiculously scripted, it may well be worth seeing for those who like Asian action films, for its star, Tony Jaa. He not only performs impossible action feats, he also choreographed them.

Jaa made an impact in the Thai thriller, Ong- Bak. Warrior- King is nowhere in that league except for the action.

It starts promisingly with myths of elephants and kings, life in a Thai village. But, when criminals abduct the elephants and sell them to Sydney (a restaurant as it turns out for gourmets who want to eat exotic animals!), Tony moves from innocent country boy to innocent lost in the wiles of inner Sydney, populated it seems mainly by Thai criminal gangs (and some Vietnamese) who would put the wind up any Australian legislator concerned about immigration abuses. There is an Aussie criminal and some fair-dinkum cops both Thai and local.

The main thing, in this context, is the choreography of the fights. The grand and very long finale which is gruelling beyond any human endurance is a masterpiece of acrobatic bone-crunching. Guess who wins!