Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior (2003)

Wow! The film overall shows how perfect a debut star can manage the action scenes. He makes us say "ouch"s and "ooh"s while watching the movie. forget the illogic scenes, ( Thailand underworld, drug mafias, boxing ring in pubs, replacing Buddha's head etc) it is actually foolishness to find errors in such scenes. I agrees cent percent that the movie is a good entertainer and Tony Ja aka Phanom proved himself with his excellent performance. The direction is also flawless and comes up to the mark especially in the fighting scenes. But i just disagrees somebody who argues that Tony Ja is the good than legendary Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Both of them did more daredevil stunts than tony did. Let's say Tony Ja is excellent but not the best ever seen.

Fmovies: Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior more than exceeded my expectations. I have been waiting for nearly a year since I first heard of it to actually see it and it did not let me down. Although the movie started a bit slow, after about half an hour, things began to pick up and the movie never looked back.

Ong-Bak is about a small town villager named Ting (Tony Jaa), who sets out to find the head of his beloved sacred statue, which was stolen. Ting finds his long lost cousin from the village, Humlae (Perttary Wongkamlao), who at first claims to not know Ting until he sees that his village did not send him alone, but with a bag of cash to use as he sees necessary to get the statue head back. This is our first real look at Tony Jaa's talents, as the first chase scene begins after Humlae takes off with the bag on his motorcycle. Amazingly, Ting follows Humlae all the way to a pit fighter type of place where the real action begins.

Although the plot is pretty thin, it is more than made up for by Jaa's entertaining and seemingly impossible stunts. The movie plays up the stunts big, as it claims no stunt-men, no wires, no CGI, etc. With all that in mind, this movie is pretty mind boggling. Comparisons to Jackie Chan are going to be inevitable, and not undeserving. I can only imagine what the two of them could have accomplished if they did a movie together while Chan was younger. Simply amazing. 8/10

Firstly, Please, please ignore any negative comments about this film.... I watched this film on it's release in Thailand a couple of years ago and I have a subtitled copy.

If you are of sound mind, this film will leave you gob-smacked at the way that Muay Thai has been portrayed on film -promoting its effectiveness in streetfighting situations and the acrobatics performed by this guy are just incredible.

Secondly... the person who wrote that the 18 year old white dudes were out of place ...do you know anything about Thailand and bars on Khaosan Road?????? the place is full of them.

If you want to see something more incredible watch the 'making of Ong Bak'

Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior fmovies. This movie is just great. There are no words to explain how classicly the actions has been choreographed. Tony Ja is simply great and beyond comparison. Bruce, Jet and Jackie took a couple of movies to reach the top in my favorite list..But Tony Ja is at the top in one shot. Sure I would add this movie as No.1 in my top 5 list of action movies ever. The first chase in the streets is one spectacular proof of Tony's efforts. The thai free style kickboxing is simply superb.

Sure a BIG feast for any action lovers.

Regards, Venkat.

Tony Ja is the new Jet Li and Jackie Chan with a thai boxing background. This guy moves as quick as Jackie, has the strength of Jet Li, put packs a more violent, deadly assault - he uses his knees and elbows for pure annihilation. Why does he use his elbow and knees so much? Because they are the hardest parts of the human body. And god damn in Ong Bak he proper messes up everyone he comes across. Thai boxing is proper hardcore, they don't mess about.In Ong Bak, the story is pretty non existent, basically some gangstas from the city come to our heros poor village and steal the Buddha's head statue, and so Tony Ja commits to bringing it back and restoring peace. Now with that out of the way, let's talk about the fighting as this is where the film excels. WOW, this IS the most realistic fighting you will ever see. The only thing I can compare it to is Ultimate Fighting, but ten times worse. Tony Ja will become a legend this is fact. His flexibility in fighting is so extreme, and this film is basically just crammed up with the biggest, most violent stunts you will ever see. For instance, in a scene where Tony and his newly met friends run away from a group of hoodlums, he gets away in style. This is done by jumping through the tiny gaps, either backwards sliding underneath cars, jumping feet and hands outstretched through a hope, running across people's heads, flippin, kicking, somersaulting absolutely everywhere. Remember when you first saw the matrix and you were like `woah', well this is so much better. For starts, the stunts in this film are REAL. Everybody gets injured. There are no wires, pulleys, fake punches, fake blood. This is how it should be. Hollywood take note. The best scenes come where there is a kinda of street fighter style arena, where the deadliest fighters compete to be champion. Tony gets accidently caught up in this, and doesn't mess around by defeating the champion with a single powerful knee thrust into the opponents chest as Tony bends forwards and twists to avoid the ensuing punch from the opponent then unleashes the killer blow. Everyone in the arena is stunned and Tony gets booed for bad sportsmanship.. But don't worry about that has the biggest fights of his life coming up.You need this film in your life. I haven't seen anything as violent and hardcore as this ever before. But even though its hardcore and low budget, the direction is slick. Double takes are often used for the incredible action so you can really appreciate, for example, taking out three men with a triple, twisting back flip and smashing their heads in with your knees and elbows at the same time with pure accuracy. I have watched this four times now and cannot get enough. Overall, the story line is weak and there are some hilarious cheesy moments, but this all works perfectly well as instead of going `god damn thats sick!' at the beginning, you will end up saying `ha ha! Did you see his elbow get torn backwards then snapped! Ha ha! This is genius!'. It's like CKY2 with all the accidents, but here it is intentional for someone to do themselves in. This is a film you will watch over and over again, and show your mates everytime they come round. 10/10

My girlfriend bought this movie for me as a gift and it turned out to be one of the greatest gifts I was ever given. I saw clips of it on the internet that just blew my mind, but the actual movie is amazing. Tony Jaa is going to be greater than Jackie Chan and Jet Li. I hope some American studio gets him in a high budget movie that allows him to show a larger audience how amazing he is. So many martial artists or action stars resort to camera tricks, wires or stuntmen for their films. Tony is the stunt man. He spent so many years doing stunts for other stars and it shows when he does his. It reminds me of the way Bruce Lee movies were made. I have seen Jackie Chan movies and even though he does many of his stunts, he still resorts to wires. In Bruce Lee films it was just pure badassness. No wires, just a show of talent and that is what Tony Jaa brings...no wires, no tricks, just whoopass.... I know this comment just went on and on, but there is a minimum so I just kept typing.