The Protector (Tom yum goong) -- 2005 -- R

Thailand has a movie market, and that's where this film came out of. It's one of those ultra-action, martial arts extravaganzas where the whole purpose of the film is to get a bunch of scenes strung together to set up long, elaborate action sequences. Story? Well, "Who cares?" is an appropriate come back to that one.

 

The basic plot of The Protector ("Tom yum goong" being its original Thai title) involves a family who are pledged to raise and protect elephants, who are used in battle by kings. It is believed that a good elephant contributes to the life force of a king and makes him powerful. The plot starts when there is an "open call" or something for elephants and when old man decides not to give away his elephant (can't figure this one out), he is killed and the elephant is taken anyway. This prompts the old man's grandson, Kham, to chase after him, which causes his to lose not only the elder elephant his grandfather was caring for, but also the baby. Kham tracks them to Australia with only a photo of two men in front of a restaurant to go by in order to get back his elephants.

 

Once in Australia, the film gets really confusing in terms of the storyline. To this stolen elephant plot, we add a plot of police corruption, drug trade, and assassination, all of which only marginally intersect our main elephant tracking plot. This whole part could have been completely left out and the movie lost very little since we apparently only came to watch Kham jump about and beat people up using a variety of theatrical martial arts.

 

Now, in the action department, this movie is absolutely incredible. Tony Jaa (who plays Kham) is very limber, very acrobatic, and just plain fast in all of his moves. The fight sequences are incredibly choreographed, and move non-stop from one end to the other. The opponents are fairly realistic in their attacking in that, on one occasion, Kham gets surrounded, and they all attack at once. Our hero does the best thing and makes a run for it to try and have at his attackers one or two at a time. He frequently takes on two at a time throughout the film, and sometimes as many as three. He didn't just fight scrawny martial arts guy either. He got to the point of fighting these huge strong-men; you know, the kind that you can beat on and they just laugh to you? But everything has its limits.

 

The more sequences we got, the longer they started to feel, and the more I just wanted the story to move forward. We got into a building on fire, and it started to feel very video gameish with random characters to fight coming out of no where and his previously defeated opponents disappearing from where they'd fallen (again, kind of video game style). The strongmen got really tedious when he's beaten on one of them for a while and then three more showed up. By the time, the main villain started interfering with the battles with the strongmen, you just want to tell her to let it end already. When it was finally over, I felt about as tired as our hero from watching the non-stop sequences.

 

As for character…who are we kidding? It was a fight movie. Kham was ok, but that's because we got some insight into his head when he passed out. We also got some minimal backstory for him. But everyone else was cardboard and fodder for Kham to beat up.

 

This is one of those guilty pleasure films that lets you feel like a little kid when you watch all the punches fly. It doesn't really lend itself to anything deep, but sometimes a mindless punch-out film is a lot of fun. This one certainly moves and is just impressive to watch.