Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior (DVD)

If my excitement for Tony Jaa is not evident from my recent articles related to his upcoming feature Tom Yum Goong, which recently was released in Thailand was not evidence enough let me take a few paragraphs to praise the man and the DVD release of Ong-Bak, which looks to only be a primer to things to come based on the footage already available online for Tom Yum Goong.

Ong-Bak tells the tale of Ting (Jaa) as he sets out from his tiny Thai village to Bangkok to recover the head of the sacred Ong-Bak Buddha, which was stolen from the villagers. Going at it alone, with limited knowledge on the whereabouts of the stolen artifact, Ting is forced to put his trust in the son of one of the villagers, Humlae (Petchtai Wongkamlao) a man whose integrity is as sketchy as his house is dirty.

Nevertheless, the two manage to work together along with the feisty little Thai girl Muay (Pumwaree Yodkamol) as the villain behind the theft proves more intimidating than his throat mic would lead you to believe.

The story of Ong-Bak is mediocre at best, but the action and unique fighting style, Muay Thai, Tony Jaa brings to the screen more than makes up for the simple storyline.

Jaa leads this feature with knees and elbows and sometimes his legs ablaze as not a single fighter can stand up to the man from Pradu. To this point we have had our succession of martial arts stars including Bruce Lee, Jet Li and, I am going to say it, Jackie Chan, but Tony Jaa would send Jackie Chan to the ER, and Jaa also does all his own stunts including flying through a coil of barbed wire, climbing fences (look ma, no hands) and passing by on the shoulders of the baddies, this guy can do it all.

And while the movie is damn impressive the special features on this DVD live a little to be desired as there is no commentary or deleted scenes. Instead we get a music video that features Jaa, the making of the stupid video, a gallery of trailers and a promotional reel featuring the RZA, as if we needed that.

However, there are some good things to outweigh those bad, even though they are limited.

The two cool little features are a behind-the-scenes look at the stunts and a look at the movements of Muay Thai. The stunt featurette is by far the coolest of the two as it gives you a look at several of the cool stunts from the film, primarily the scene where Jaa sets his legs on far and knees a poor baddie in the chest... OUCH! The movements of Muay Thai featurette is okay, it is cool to check out a couple of the moves, but the on-screen descriptions are all in Thai and there are no English subtitles to tell us what the hell it says, a little frustrating.

Overall, this disc does not rely on special features. Ong-Bak is only 105 minutes long and well worth the watch over and over again. If you want a small sample check out the links to the right, may I suggest "Get Him" or "Beast in the Ring." Unfortunately these clips in no way really show you what the movie has to offer on a whole, it does give you a taste.