The Trailer For Prachya Pinkaew's CHOCOLATE Finally Arrives!

Well, that'll teach me to not check the current uploads into the ScreenAnarchy Video Player right away. Prachya Pinkaew's Chocolate has been, undoubtedly, one of the most anticipated films in these parts for well over a year and a trailer has been frustratingly non-existent despite promo reels displaying at the international markets for months now. But no more. I received an upload notice to the player early yesterday and figured I'd get to it a bit later ... later became a bit later until I just got to it now to discover that not only does a trailer now exist, but the good folk at Deknang have graciously provided us with it. Here's what you need to know:

Chocolate is the latest directorial effort from Prachya Pinkaew, the man at the helm of both Ong Bak and Tom Yum Goong / The Protector. While Pinkaew and his star Tony Jaa have had a fairly public falling out recently - no doubt triggered in part by Jaa's desire to direct Ong Bak 2 himself and resulting in Pinkaew's cancellation of Jaa feature project Sword - he is quite confident he has a new star here in Nicharee “Jeeja” Vismistananda. Don't let youth or gender fool you, Vismistananda has been training under the personal guidance of Jaa's mentor and fight choreographer Panna Rittikrai for years in preparation for this role so you know she's got the goods. In Chocolate she plays an autistic girl who goes on a mission to collect debts to save her ill mother, a course of action that puts her on a collision course with gangs of both the local Thai and Japanese varieties. Japanese film fans will recognize popular Japanese leading man Hiroshi Abe as one of the yakuza bosses.

The trailer itself? Hot damn. This girl is incredibly fast, very agile, and has an awful lot of charisma. The nod to Bruce Lee is brilliant. the fight choreography is stellar and the strikes hurt. A lot. And that's before you even get to the included bloopers, just to assure those of you who might think they're faking this somehow. Stunt man got an owie. Vismistananda got stitches. This is madness. Madness of the brilliant, painful kind. The trailer follows below the break.