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The Protector

2005, Movie, R, 84 mins

The Protector: Review

PROTECTOR, THE | TOM YUM GOONG | WARRIOR KING
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Thai martial artist Tony Jaa gave notice that old-school bone cracking was back in the house in his first internationally distributed feature, ONG-BAK (2003), a paean to the power of fists of fury to outshine digitally enhanced, wirework-facilitated, editing-fragmented action. Jaa stuck with ONG-BAK director-scenarist Prachya Pinkaew for his follow-up, which features a similar mix of furious fighting and sentimental drama. Kham Koi (Jaa) are descended from an ancient clan who raise superior elephants — Thai tradition has it that kings derive power from particularly superior elephants — and protect their charges using the ancient martial art of Muay Thai. The prize of Mr. Koi's (Sotorn Rungruaeng) herd is Por-Yai, a magnificent bull elephant with distinctive pale coloring. Mr. Koi's son has grown up alongside Por-Yai's calf Kohrn, whose mother was shot and killed by heartless poachers. Mr. Koi is later murdered by the same men, and both elephants are stolen. Kham learns that the elephants have been taken to Sydney, Australia, and tracks them to the Tom Yum Goong restaurant. Owned by the vicious Madame Rose Simm (Xing Jing), who's busy viciously clawing her way to the top of the Simm family empire, the modest-looking Tom Yum Goong is a front for all manner of illegal activity; its cavernous VIP area is a hotbed of drug dealing, white slavery, gambling and traffic in endangered species, which are served up to jaded foodies. The action set pieces are undeniably spectacular — especially the one in which Jaa wallops his opponents with the elephant bones he's lashed to his arms — and recall the glory days of Bruce Lee. Jaa often credits Lee, Jet Li and Jackie Chan with inspiring him to take up martial arts, and Chan's brief cameo in this film suggests that he's anointing Jaa his successor. Little Kohrn (too little, in fact, for an elephant that's at least 10) is adorable, despite the ill-considered decision to give him extra personality by making him chirp like a dolphin. But the film overall is an incoherent mess, at least in its U.S. form: Cut by some 25 minutes from the original, dubbed (to be fair, dialogue like "You killed my father and stole my elephants!" probably doesn't sound much better in the original Thai) and coarsely rescored by The RZA, it's little more than a disjointed succession of kick-ass action scenes motivated by a country bumpkin's quest to rescue his giant pets from big-city baddies. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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