Ah ... I've been waiting for this day to come and it finally has. Though I had already seen Ong Bak upwards of about fifteen times today was my first opportunity to witness it on the big screen and, despite one major concern which I'll come to late, I was one very happy boy.
The ad campaign openly invites comparison to Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee and for those not already exposed to the goodness that is Tony Jaa: yes, he really is that good. I've said it before and I'll say it again, this man will be the next major international action star. If you are even remotely a fan of martial arts films this is absolutely required viewing.
Right, a brief summary for those unfamiliar. Tony Jaa plays Ting, a young villager from a poor Thai town who has been trained in the art of muay thai by a local monk but has sworn not to use it to fight. Ting's town is the home of a monastary and an ancient statue of Buddha, known as the Ong Bak. When a young thug from Bangkok steals the head of the Ong Bak for a dealer in stolen antiquities the village believes it will be cursed if they cannot retreive it and Ting is sent to Bangkok to find the village chief's estranged son, Hum Lae, and with his help track down the thief and retreive the head. What follows is less a "film" than an excuse to string together a sequence of the most stunning physical stunts and martial arts sequences assembled at least since Jackie Chan's Drunken Master 2. Is the script a work of high art? Nope. But, frankly, who cares? Director Prachya Pinkaew isn't aiming to create a Thai version of Crouching Tiger or Hero he simply wants to expose you to one of the most impressive physical talents in the world and he does that in spades.
But if you're a regular reader here you already know all this. What you want to know is how this version differs from the original Thai. Well, there are two areas: it has been cut to streamline it slightly and a portion of the soundtrack has been reworked.
First, the soundtrack. Some people have been concerned that the presence of The RZA means that Luc Besson had ditched the traditional Thai feel of the soundtrack in favor of some poorly chosen hip hop. Not the case. A major portion of the soundtrack has been left as it originally was - every sequence that occurs in Ting's village as well as the sequences that revolve closely around the Ong Bak have been left with the original soundtrack. In other words where the visuals reflect traditional Thai society the Thai soundtrack has been left in place. The RZA comes in almost exclusively in the Bangkok sequences, most obviously in Ting's run ins with the local gangs. In other words the more urban sequences get a more urban soundtrack. On the whole I'm quite pleased with the changes ... the original soundtrack had a tendency to get repetitive and that issue is resolved nicely here. Additionally The RZA is proving himself to be a more than capable film composer ... his work here is worlds away from his work in the Wu Tang Clan and has obviously been closely tailored to suit the mood and setting of the film. He has altered his approach to suit the film rather than trying to impose himself upon it. The only musical change that I feel is for the worse is during the police raid on the fight club simply because the original music was so incredibly cheesy that replacing it spoils the audio joke there ...
And now the re-edit. The short summary is this: Muay's sister is gone, everything else is intact. With his re-edit Besson has simply removed a purely secondary sub plot that added nothing to the film but a longer running time and, thus, a greater gap between the action sequences that are the film's bread and butter. For those who feared that he would work his way through the film endlessly tweaking and adjusting, you can put those fears away. If there was ANY editing within sequences it was so subtle that I didn't notice it whatsoever. In fact, Besson's refusal to edit within scenes actually creates a few small continuity issues: when Hum Lae sees Muay's sister over dosing in Don's apartment - her sole appearance in the film - it is obvious that he knows her but the film never explains why and never explains the meaning of the envelope she hands him. There is also one instance of trailing dialogue as the conversation between Muay and Hum Lae in the removed hospital sequences carries out onto a street sequence that has remained in the film. The only other change of note, as you should have noticed by now, is that the film does not translate Hum Lae's name, so if you're looking for Dirty Balls you're not going to get him. The use of the Thai name rather than the translated name makes Muay's reaction to hearing his real name for the first time a bit puzzling but on the whole is also a good move as it makes it far, far easier to take his character seriously.
So, if I'm happy with the edit and the soundtrack, where's the problem that I mentioned earlier? It's the print. I don't know yet if this is an isolated problem or one that spans the entire release - I'll know better later tonight as I'm going to be seeing it again at a different theater with different friends - but the print I saw screened was far too dark. This is a darkly lit film in the first place but the print I saw screened has some major problems with the light levels, enough so that it makes some of the low-light action sequences difficult to make out. If other people have experienced this, I'd like to hear about it ...