So another Tony Jaa film, and another martial arts fest. I’ll admit I wasn’t completely won over by Ong Bak. It was a spectacular martial arts film, but one which offered nothing more than martial arts. Not in itself a bad, as the rest of the film was hilariously bad, to the point of being hilariously good.
Tom Yum Goong is a story about Kham and his quest to find his elephants Por Yai and Korn. The elephants have been kidnapped after Kham’s father is murdered in cold blood by poachers posing as vets. Kham discovers the truth and follows the lead all the way to Sydney, Australia, where he runs into a girl who owes money to loan sharks, and a cop who’s framed for the series of slavery and elephant kidnappings.
How does it compare to Ong Bak? Well I have to say Ong Bak didn’t offer a pretentious and pointless story where the plot development is as exquisite as a dirty wet fart. The story, like Ong Bak, serves as a vehicle for the martial art shenaningans that are to take place. With Ong Bak, you knew the story was bad, you knew that the only thing that everything would lead up to is a big arse kicking fight.
Things are different with Tom Yum Goong. There actually seems an attempt to tell a story, to offer more than just a series of fight sequences. This would be absolutely fantastic if it wasn’t for the fact that the story telling is worse than being told a tale by a dyslexic 3 year old with half his face paralysed (or her, or it, let’s not be sexist). Indeed, the first 30-40 minutes all we really see is Tony Jaa running around like a puppy trying to find his bone.
When the fights do kick off, they’re actually both underwhelming or overwhelming. They’re underwhelming because of the fact that most of it is what we’ve seen before. A rikshaw chase is replaced with a hilarious speed boat chase instead, for example, or you see a load of fences and just know Jaa is going to bounce all over them. It’s great for those who haven’t seen Ong Bak, but not particularly amazing for previous viewers.
There are some exceptional moments, however, such as Jaa’s stamina in having no less than three major fights where he takes on tens of bad guys and proceeds to pummel their backsides in to the ground. Never in fights have I heard so much bone crunching, so many thuds and yelps of agony. It’s unnerving at times, watching and feeling the echo of the crunch as Jaa cracks another arm in 200 different ways in half a second.
Perhaps the most amazing piece is a fight following Jaa staircase upon staircase, where, by the time he reaches the top, he’s physically exhausted. I can’t imagine anyone now who would be able to carry out such an ambitious fight sequence, and still have the energy to be walking around. You can see the physical burn it impresses upon Jaa.
It’s fair to say that like Ong Bak, this film is about the fighting, so in that regard it hits harder and stronger than it’s old brother, but it also feels a little rehashed. Most of the fights are pretty spectacular, for sure, but, it may just be me, it just seemed like a bigger and grimer version of the acrobatic brilliance of Ong Bak.
The stand out fight is perhaps the mix of Capoiera, Korean sword fighting and wrestling vs Jaa’s Muay Thai. That scene alone is martial arts as metaphorical sex at it’s finest, and simply beautiful and mesmerising to watch. Still, it’s one of the exceptions to the rule of mundane predictable fighting which just doesn’t ignite the adrenalin that Ong Bak did.
In all, Tom Yum Goong could have taken a lesson in telling a story if it seriously intended to tell one, because as it stands it’s worse than Ong Bak, and I simply couldn’t understand the Thalish dialect which needed subtitles itself.
The fighting is what saves the film from being mediocre, but side by side with Ong Bak, Ong Bak did everything first, Tom Yum Goong simply does it bigger. If that’s enough for you, then this film will be perfect. For everyone else, it will leave them wanting more.
Verdict: Spectacular but familiar fighting, with a script you wouldn’t use as toilet paper. Good for what it is