Chocolate
Dir: Prachya Pinkaew
Rating: 4.0
Magnet Releasing
92 Minutes
Thailand seems to be asserting itself as the heir to the action cinema; the US has given way to superhero mythology, Segal and Van Damme are relegated to direct-to-video and John Woo has only just decided to stop slumming it here in the States. What’s the last great Hong Kong action flick you’ve heard of in recent years? Reminder: Kung Fu Hustle came out in 2004.
Prachya Pinkaew’s Ong Bak was the first taste of Thailand’s cinema to most viewers, featuring the major debut of Tony Jaa (touted by many as the new Bruce Lee) smashing skulls with his knees and elbows. His newest film, Chocolate, introduces JeeJa Yanin as an autistic girl who learns martial arts simply by watching others doing it. Also, she really likes M&Ms.
After the bloated, convoluted Tom-Yum-Goong (a.k.a. The Protector), Pinkaew has returned to form by delivering a film more in line with the simple plot of Ong Bak: our hero Zen (accompanied by yet another chubby sidekick) must use her abilities to shake down the people that owe money to her cancer-ridden mother in order to fund her chemotherapy, eventually crossing the gangster that originally separated her Thai mother from her Japanese father.
One of the things that make Thai action cinema at this stage so captivating is how showy it is, as if it still needs to prove itself. Ong Bak not only has Tony Jaa taking on various disciplines of martial arts and graffiti displaying taunting messages to Luc Besson, but also features instant replays/multiple takes of Jaa’s most impressive, dangerous stunts. With Chocolate, he practices a surprising amount of restraint, allowing the film one replay at its climax, but that doesn’t mean that he’s gone soft. At this point, Pinkaew’s films aren’t as slick as something like Punisher War Zone. Chocolate, like its predecessors, is raw, a bit messy, relies too much on needless (and not very good) computer effects, but any flaws are negated by the film’s pure energy.
That energy comes in, obviously, with the film’s main attraction: the action sequences. While lacking the same kind of spectacular stunts that made Ong Bak and Tom-Yum-Goong so exciting, Chocolate makes up for it with its protagonist. To see a muscular man bury his elbow into the skull of an enemy is hardly as exciting as watching a tiny young woman like JeeJa Yanin thrash her considerably bigger adversaries in a similar manner — and watching Tony Jaa do it is pretty exciting. Additionally, the film never attempts to objectify its heroine as a Western action film might. She never kisses another girl (she certainly kicks them, though) and fights in a knee-length skirt and a pair of comfortable shoes — not leather and heels. It’s refreshing.
The film has a blooper reel playing over the credits in a manner similar to Jackie Chan films, except it lacks the silliness of Chan accidentally pulling a door off its hinges during a fight scene. Rather, it shows the extremes the actors and stunt crew reach in the pursuit of cinema: accidental contact in fight scenes (especially to JeeJa Yanin), bleeding heads, and even, in one case, hospitalization. The film’s most audacious move, however, comes not with a fight scene (many of which are audacious), but with one of Zen’s learning materials: she watches Pinkaew’s own Ong Bak on TV, learning the Muay Thai techniques of Tony Jaa. When she first springs into action, it is the image of Jaa that flashes in her head. It’s a bold move to establish your own star as canon, but fortunately Thai cinema is anything if not bold.
by Danny Djeljosevic
