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Warrior King (2006)

Director: Prachya Pinkaew

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From Time Out London

Kham (Tony Jaa) is a naïve country boy who lives by a strict regime of selflessness, philanthropy and skull-crushing violence. His best friend (an elephant) is kidnapped by a barbaric horde of Australian restaurateurs who have plans to turn the beast into posh nosh for the clientele of their back-alley offal restaurant (think ‘St John’ with panda meat instead of pig’s trotters). Kham, unsurprisingly, is furious. Prachya Pinkaew’s follow-up to the brutal yet eminently pleasurable ‘Ong Bak’ is a horribly rough around the edges revenge-flick that hankers desperately for international admiration. The real-people-doing-real-things action scenes are choreographed with a zip and flair that makes the CGI and wirework used in Hollywood action films look very plebian indeed, but Jaa, who is ritually out-acted by a baby elephant, unequivocally fails to supply any credibility to this idiotic tale. Worst of all, Thai comedian Petchtai Wongkamlao, who starred as Jaa’s sidekick in ‘Ong Bak’, returns as a (barely) multilingual cop based in Sydney who spends much of his screen time carelessly wading through chunks of cue-card English and supplying much unintentional laughter in the process. Very silly.

Author: David Jenkins 2006-07-25 10:55:05

Time Out London Issue 1875: July 26-August 2 2006