Prachya Pinkaew
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When Jackie Chan shares a brief moment with Tony Jaa early in "The Protector," we could be witnessing the passing of the torch from one martial-arts master to another, or simply a nod of respect from a hot young star to one of his most illustrious predecessors.
There's a moment in his latest export The Protector where it appears as though he's killed someone with his penis (lo, how I would love to avoid that epitaph), and in the meantime, he dispatches foes with the heedless joy of obvious predecessor Jackie Chan (who has a cameo in the film shot so ineptly that it suggests a Jackie Chan impersonator smeared with Vaseline).
If Chan (who has a cameo in The Protector) seems made of rubber, with the face of a melancholic clown, Jaa is pure steel, with the face of a stubborn country boy.
Paralleling Tony Jaa to a young Jackie Chan is a pretty fair comparison, once the fighting starts Jaa and his cast of stunt-fighters pull of amazing, vicious fight choreography, gleefully reminiscent of Drunken Master, and maybe even the best martial arts film ever made, Drunken Master 2. There are no wires, no CGI, and from what I can see no mats; just perfectly skilled performers executing intentionally ferocious, graphic moves.
The sequence, an eye-popping homage to Bruce Lee's "Game of Death," is done, incredibly, in one shot.
The Protector actually seems a bit nostalgic for the days of such Bruce Lee classics as Enter the Dragon and Fist of Fury .
A new soundtrack, thanks to rights-owner Luc Besson ("La Femme Nikita," "The Professional"), enlivens the whole enterprise, adding a Western edge with modern techno and hip-hop beats.
(In one intentionally over-the-top scene recalling one of The Bride’s adventures from “Kill Bill,” Cam cracks about 30 limbs on at least that many enemies, each injury accompanied by a brutal KRRRRK on the soundtrack.)
The Protector is no Kill Bill .
If you ever wanted a feature-length version of the scene from Tony Jaa’s “The Protector” where in one shot he literally fights his way up to the roof of a building filled with baddies, then “The Raid” is the movie for you.
Pinkaew tailor-made this film to showcase the former stuntman's jaw-dropping skills (Jaa doubled for Robin Shou in the movie version of "Mortal Kombat") and there's even talk of another Jaa/Pinkaew collaboration.
It’s far more impressive than the whole mind-numbing 96-minute single-take of Russian Ark (2002).
I’d add that the conventions are taken to their illogical extreme, but after Kung Fu Hustle (2004) and The Protector (2005), the only illogical extreme left is the bulk and shape of this film’s hero.
The plot to director Pinkaew's audacious follow-up to Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior plays kind of like Free Willy with elephants.
No wonder Magnolia Pictures has decided to open it in wide release, despite the Thai language with English subtitles; in the era of "House of Flying Daggers" and "Hero," it's starting to make sense to put these foreign action flicks in the multiplexes.
Jackie Chan was always Mr. Nice Guy, and the recent wire-fu epics (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) are more about grace than gore.
Now even Jet Li, who once disavowed them, agreed to use wires in Hero.
He also has two memorable encounters, one of them inside a burning Buddhist temple, with an Australian behemoth named Nathan Jones , who's becoming international cinema's go-to large man (he played the giant Brad Pitt's Achilles defeated in the opening scene of Troy).
There's an uninterrupted four minute fight sequence where Jaa fights his way up a spirally four story concourse and a battle with an intimidating Capoeira Fighter (Lateef Crowder) and Australian giant (strongman Nathan B. Jones, "Troy") in a Buddhist Temple engulfed in fire and water.
With recent releases like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero , we've come to expect more out of this kind of film, so it's a bit of a challenge to accept these inadequacies as serious filmmaking.