Ray Pride

Tony Jaa: the world is his trampoline. The nonstop series of brawls that constitute the middle forty minutes of "Ong-bak: The Thai Warrior," (2003) a recut version of a recent box-office sensation in its native Thailand, cannot but take your breath away. Pretty fantastic pop-pulp mayhem with a newly minted action star, it's beautifully orchestrated bunk, a showcase for Jaa's multiple fighting skills, with a framing plot involving the abduction and search for a village's missing Buddha head--known as, yes, "Ong-bak"--an excuse for oily baddies and rotten dialogue. Yet Jaa jumps, rolls, kick-boxes, and moves like a water bug on the surface of a lake in every street-level fight or back-alley battle set in Bangkok. Director Prachya Pinkaew is kind enough to repeat additional angles of the cool stuff--"no computer graphics, no stunt doubles, no strings attached," the ads rightly brag--like outtakes within the sequence itself or multi-angle pornography. It's happy, clever stuff when the characters keep their yaps shut, with one sequence of limber beauty--a forest of Buddha heads are suspended in netting in the aqueous blue beneath a bay--and one bout of fisticuffs and footicuffs played out in front of the graffiti, "Hi, Speilberg: let do it together" [sic]. Martial arts can wink as well. 107m.

"Ong-bak: The Thai Warrior" opens Friday,

(2005-02-08)

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