Ong-Bak/ Phanom Yeerum
 

My wife brought home a copy of a new Thai film on DVD called "Ong-Bak", Baa-Ram-Ewe Productions, released by Sahamongkol Film International.

The movie features a Thai actor/martial artist named Phanom Yeerum. Basically, he is performing the kind of cutting edge stunts and fighting that Jackie Chan used to do in his prime. Being filmed in Thailand, there are some pretty hairy stunts that would never get approved in Hollywood. The story is pretty standard, but Yeerum's fighting style is a dynamic combination of Muay Thai and Chinese Kung-Fu (as a guess), and has a fairly unique feel to it, compared to everything else out there these days.

The bad news is that the film is currently only available in Thai language, w/ no subtitle options. But trust me, you already know the story, and the action makes the movie well worth seeing. No, it's not "real", and they do speed some of the sequences up, but it is pretty cool to watch. If you like these kinds of films, this is a must see.

A google search on "Ong-Bak" will produce a number of results. Following is one review:

http://www.nixflix.com/reviews/ongbak.htm

If anyone else has seen this or any other film by Yeerum, I'd be interested to hear your comments! Yeerum is young enough to make a big name for himself. His only short coming is that he is really following in Jackie Chan's footsteps, rather than finding his own niche.

Regards,

Hi (first post btw)

I saw the movie today and it totally blew me away. As you say it has the old Jackie Chan feeling but in a modern and more violent way. I really appreciate that a movie has the guts to show fights of that kind instead of the stylized and soft way jackie chan (too weak) or jet li (too many wires) do them. At no point i felt like "ok there's the wires, boring" although i'm pretty sure they were used. As you mentioned his style and techniques are kind of unique (in their combination), feeling more realistic than most of the film-fights these days. What surprised me was the very calm and visually high class scenes in the beginning of the film which did a lot for the atmosphere while i didnt understand a single word they spoke, heh. It has many things that could make it cult, like the two men that watch the fights of which one cant speak properly and the hilarious escape through the city. Sometimes it feels very trashy though, seeing the gas station (...) or the syringes of one of the fighters. Definitely worth watching but sadly there are no subtitles.

Raphael Scholz

Hello Mr. Scholz,.

Glad you like it. I remember waiting for the "action" to start, and seeing Phanom knock out this guy with a fast knee-kick to the head (if you don't know what this is, you'll have to take a look). First time I've seen that kind of Thai technique on film, that I can recall. Pretty impressive.

I agree that this movie and Phanom Yeerum in general will become a "big thing" sometime soon. So this movie will surely be subtitled eventually.

Regards,

I'm 20 years old, please don't call me Mr Scholz ;)

And oh yes this first kick made me jump up in my seat and go crazy, i watched it 4 times in a row and it was still the most impressive introduction kick i ever saw.. *sigh*

The second kick i watched several times was the low-kick to high side-kick or ashi-barai to mawashi-geri near the end.. i practiced that a bit but its so hard..

btw i just watched a documentary about an american guy going to thailand to train in a muay thai school there and fight one of those guys. 'Dreamchasers - Muay Thai Documentary' it was called, impressive insight in the culture and muay thai especially. He was 31 years old and the 'boy' he fought was 15 ... both 62 kg, it was amazing. the 15 year old won.

OT: although i only trained shotokan karate yet (since im 9 years old) i learned alot more real fighting skills through watching muay thai fights/training and putting them into action with my sparring partner. I also can relate more to the physique of (muay) thai people than japanese :)