MUAY THAI GIANT Blu-ray Review

Hmm.  Muay Thai Giant.

This is a weird one.

Thai action cinema has become very well respected around the world over the last 8 years, ever since Tony Jaa and Ong Bak burst on the scene.  In its wake, we've seen things like The Bodyguard, Born To Fight, Chocolate, Tom Yum Goong, and many others get a fair amount of press among genre fans around the world.  However, for every Ong Bak, there is an Ong Bak 3.  Not every action film can be a winner, and it seems like some really bad ideas are getting green lit, I think Muay Thai Giant, AKA Somtum, fits in that category.

Seven foot gentle giant Barney Emerald (Nathan Jones) is drugged and robbed while on holiday in Pattaya. Two Thai sisters, one who speaks English, the other, a Muay Thai kick-boxing champion, befriend him so he can recover his passport. When Barney eats the spicy "somtum", it has a physical reaction, sending him into a raging and violent martial-arts frenzy. The girls use the somtum to control Barney's powerful reactions to earn back his money and take down the local crime lords.

You know Nathan Jones.  He was the giant wrestler in Jet Li's Fearless and appeared in Tony Jaa's Tom Yum Goong as a featured fighter.  He's done a lot of other stunt type work around the world as well.  How many 7 foot, 350 wrestlers can there be?  Someone at Sahamongkol decided it was a good idea to make a film with him at the center and to make him act.  Bad choice.  Nathan Jones is a scary dude, he's huge and knows how to yell effectively, but he cannot act. 

Muay Thai Giant is a very schizophrenic film, in that it can't quite decide if it is a comedy or an action film.  There are plenty of films that manage to combine those two genres well, but this one just ricochets back and forth between them, which is dizzying.  There is no attempt to blend them.  What results is a film with no emotional center.  Now, I know this isn't exactly a weepie, but it should still attempt make me care about some of the characters, and I really don't.

The film's original title is Somtum, which is the name of a spicy papaya salad that is to Barney as spinach is to Popeye.  The retitling of the film to Muay Thai Giant baffles me, simply because at no point does Barney ever fight using Muay Thai.  He attempts to practice it, but he looks so ridiculous practicing an artform designed for tiny people, that it's hard not to laugh.  In reality, the vast bulk of Barney's fight scenes are full-on wrestling matches.  They don't take place in wrestling rings, but all of the same moves are used, and all of the bad guys he fights are obviously wrestlers.  It is really boring.  On the other hand you have national Muay Thai champion Jindamanee who actually can fight with Muay Thai, but all of her fight scenes are sped up, so they look like they were pulled from a silent movie and it really takes away from the impact.  I have no doubt that she is a talented fighter, but she just doesn't seem ready for prime time.

Muay Thai Giant was disappointing.  I didn't go in with huge expectations, but I still managed to come out disappointed, and after having seen Nathan Jones covered in glitter wearing Speedos, perhaps a bit scarred.  If you're a Thai action completist, by all means pick it up, but there isn't much in the way of traditional Thai action to be found.

The Disc:

In spite of my disappointment with the film, I was pretty jazzed about Magnet's presentation of Muay Thai Giant.  The video was clear and sharp, you can tell right from the opening credits sequence that we're in for a visual treat.  The problem was putting something on screen worth being wowed by.  The audio was similarly great, Muay Thai Giant's DTS-HD MA 5.1 track is very solid.  The action is spread out and everything sounds clear and distinct.  I didn't test the English audio track, but I will say it might be worthwhile because often when the Thai actors were speaking English, it was very hard to understand, but there were no subtitles.

The extras on the disc are pretty standard and nothing to write home about.  We get a making of featurette that runs about 7 minutes with a few interviews of the main production staff and Jones talking about the genesis of the project and a little bit of the production.  Nothing terribly in depth, but it did provide a little bit of background.  There is also a 10 minute behind-the-scenes featurette that simply presents footage of the action sequences being filmed without narration, entertaining for a minute, but without context, it gets old.  There's also an international trailer.

Muay Thai Giant is a pretty bad film with a very decent Blu-ray presentation.  Can't win 'em all.