rena's websight Ong Bak
A Thai martial arts movie. I was skeptical to watch this at first because it’s a serious movie and I usually like comedy movies, but despite that this one drew me in very much.
The movie starts off in a village in rural Thailand, Ban Nong Pradu, which has an ancient Buddha statup called Ong-Bak. A guy called Don from Bangkok comes to the village in order to buy something valuable from one of the villagers but he refuses to sell it, instead Don steals Ong-Bak’s head in the night and returns to Bangkok with it. The main guy in the movie who is also a Muay Thai badass promises to follow to Bangkok and return it.
The movie has a lot of cool parts to it, including brutal Muay Thai fights in a fight club, and a massive scale Tuk-Tuk chase through developing Thailand. This movie feels way different to the Hong Kong martial arts films we usually watch, the martial arts is much less flashy and more direct and in self defence. The main character doesn’t really like fighting, and just do the bare minimum like pushing his opponents away, except when they really leave him no choice. Thailand as a setting was really interesting too. Overall this movie was a surprise hit for me.
