Chocolate

Posted by Greg

March 24, 2008

Mmm… ChocolSMACK!

*** out of *****

It’ll be hard in the future for any Thai martial arts movie not to be compared to Ong Bak, the badass punch-a-thon that put Thai fight films on the map. If you’ve seen that one, or its lame sequel Tom Yum Koong you pretty much know what to expect here. Prachya Pinkaew, the director of both of the aforementioned movies, returns to deliver more of the same, although instead of a rock-hard Isaan boy, he uses a lithe but quick young woman to mete out justice.

The plot is simple and doesn’t clutter itself with too many pointless details. Yakuza dude Masashi (Hiroshi Abe) and Thai mafia girl Zin (Ammara Siripong) have a hot romance against the wishes of her boss, Number 8 (Pongpat Wahirabanjong), who promptly orders Masahi out of Thailand. Zin soon finds that she’s pregnant, and ends up having a little girl named Zen (Jeeja Wismitanantthat), who turns out to be autistic, although she’s blessed with heightened hearing and martial arts skills. When Zin gets cancer years later, Zen sets out to collect on outstanding loans owed to her mother in order to pay for the expensive treatment.

Making a really meaty martial arts movie is a tightrope-line to walk - make it too serious and people who want fighting will complain it’s too dramatic; make it all about the fighting and people will complain it has no plot. After the very loud complaints from fans about Tom Yum Koong, director Pinkaew focussed on making this outing a bit less over-the-top stupid and more personal. The film’s strongest asset is young Jeeja who, at only 24, can twist and twirl and kick with the best of them. Not only is she devastatingly cute, but she’s got a likeable and appealing screen presence, which is a must when your entire reason for being in the film is to put people in the hospital.

I guess I could probably complain a bit about the very linear plot that borrows quite a bit from other films - Zen goes to goes to an ice factory (nice nod to Bruce Lee’s famous incident in The Big Boss) and beats up henchman using ice-cutting tools; goes to butcher’s, beats up henchman using meat cutting tools, including a nearly-direct repeat of the ‘throw the knife away’ gag from Kung Fu Hustle, except with a huge cleaver. It’s a bit like watching someone play the old “Kung Fu” video game and doesn’t show much creativity, although obviously some effort was made to give the characters some dramatic weight, which mostly works.

The fighting scenes are impressive but at the same time, nothing new. Many of the moves have been done in Jackie Chan films from years ago - thanks to him, there’s really not a prop left that someone hasn’t used as a weapon. That being said, there are some really impressive moves that look like some crazy combination between taekwondo (Jeeja’s discipline), break dancing and capoeira, especially when she fights some young dude near the end who looks and dresses like DJ Jazzy Jeff (and growls and twitches like a wild animal, for some reason).

And of course you have the perennial Thai favorite - ladyboy/transvestite characters who strut around like they own the place but look completely ridiculous and totally non-threatening - I was reminded of the Euro-trash vampire gang from Lost Boys. Again, the script could have used a bit of work - at one point, a bad guy gets beat up, shot four or five times, swiped across the chest with a samurai sword and still has the energy to follow Jeeja around the ledge of a four-story building fighting the whole time.

The finale is indeed intense, a 20-minute showdown between Zen and four or five guys that just keeps getting more brutal with every kick or every time someone bounces their way through neon signs 40 feet down the side of a building. Chocolate is definitely a serviceable martial arts move, and certainly shows that Thai fight talent is some of the best in the world, but I really can’t wait until someone comes along with a dense, epic script that really show the world what Thailand can do. In the meantime, this will do just fine.

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