Return of the Warrior

Tony, Tony, Tony… What have you been up to? First you entice us with your crazy stunts in Ong Bak and follow up with knockout Tom Yum Goong but then you've really fallen off the radar. The guy literally blasted onto the screen from nowhere and became an instant star in the martial arts world. With Jackie Chan and Jet Li aging and Donnie Yen producing material of inconsistent quality, action fans were hungry for a worthy successor. We thought that person may have been Tony Jaa and it still might be.

Fans of Jaa will know that he had been previously tied into the worst 10-year movie contract ever heard of by Sahamongkol Film International. The contract prevented him from doing any film other than the ones they wanted. Jaa had something of a breakdown and there were even stories that Jaa left the sets of the Ong Bak sequels to go and become a monk in a monastery. The 10 years expired and the guy is now back on the big screen – but wait! He signed on again with the same damn production company and they are once again being complete morons! Following recent news that Jaa had signed on to star in the next Fast & Furious movie, Sahamongkol Film once again threatened legal action against Jaa stating that he'd broken his contract by taking on work without their permission. For us lucky movie fans, it looks like Jaa is going ahead with Fast 7 despite this, as well as Hong Kong movie SPL 2 with Wu Jing! Excellent news indeed!

Jaa's movies have always been simple movies reminiscent of Van Damme movies from yesteryear. They have a lot of heart and a lot of ass kicking. In the original Tom Yum Goong (AKA The Protector), Jaa's elephants get kidnapped and brought over to Australia. Jaa goes over and gets them back. Simple! The movie was pretty badass, featuring an amazing one take sequence as Jaa makes his way to the top of a building, taking down loads of bad guys on the way.

There was also a crazy Jaa vs. 50 bad guys sequence towards the end of the movie. It was pretty cool stuff for martial arts fans, especially as Jaa has always looked like he could really do the stuff we see him do in his movies.

In Tom Yum Goong 2, Jaa finds himself in a predicament as his elephant is kidnapped once again, but the agenda is not so simple this time round. Big bad guy Mr. LC (RZA), a martial arts fan, wishes to use the kidnapped elephant to leverage Jaa to do his evil bidding. Jaa must find a way to stop RZA and save his elephant, all while being hunted by what appears to be almost everyone in Thailand.

The premise sounds like the prefect setup for loads of ass kicking and mad stunts just like the original. Unfortunately, despite all the good intentions, the end product just doesn't deliver.

We don't really need a story but some essence of interconnecting events would be nice. The first half of the movie seems to be dominated by a random and ridiculously long drawn out motorbike chase scene, featuring some really terrible CGI. Gone are the real chases and stunts that we saw Jaa performing in Ong Bak, instead we have third-rate special effects and extreme ridiculousness. It doesn't even make any sense why this whole portion of the movie exists but it does.

Surprisingly, Petchtai Wongkamlao as cop sidekick Mark, was probably the best thing in this film. He provided timely comic relief whereas JeeJa Yanin, from Chocolate and Raging Phoenix fame, is shamefully underused and portrayed to be almost useless next to our hero. Rhatha Phongam is also underused, present only to serve as eye candy.

The single worst, most unforgivable element of this movie is RZA (though the other American actors come close). He has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. No on-screen presence, no charisma, terrible acting, terrible fighting, just terrible terrible terrible. I pray that no one ever allows him on a film set ever again or perhaps he should try method acting and really die at the end of his next movie.

So far things are not sounding too good. So how was the fighting? To be honest, it wasn't that great either. After the first half of the movie was dominated by the silly motorbike chase sequence, we would hope the latter half would focus more on the fights. But once the fights begin, we are not given anything that even comes close to spectacle that was seeing Jaa take down 50 guys back to back. There was nothing new and the over use of CGI ultimately reduced everything to a farce. The first fight with Maresse Crump showed potential which was just never fully realized.

It would also have been nice to see Jaa go up against several worthy adversaries instead of a handful of not so great bad guys who just don't seem to be able to die.

All I was hoping for was a competent martial arts movie and at the end of the day, that isn't what we got. Even in the absence of Jaa's original movies, I would not recommend this.

A disappointment from start to finish, I suggest you check out Jaa's earlier efforts and keep your fingers crossed that his US debut will deliver what Tom Yum Goong 2 couldn't.

One to miss and no, I didn't watch it in 3D and can't imagine it would do anything other than make the experience even worse.

Rating 5 out of 10.

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Story: Ridiculous, boring, tons of plot holes - but who cares, it's got Tony Jaa AND JeeJa Yanin in it, right?

Martial arts choreography: Tony Jaa, half of the time, is running away from something and not fighting back. They could have shown off his great athletic skills but compared to the chase scene in Ong Back it's a joke what they do here. Also the variety of moves is rather small and unimaginative and the only thing that sets it apart from other martial arts movies is that it's Muay Thai. Enter JeeJa Yanin who has shown in her previous movies that she is a force to be reckoned with. In this movie I felt like they didn't really know what to do with her and she has to be saved by Tony's character quite often. They didn't really give her enough room to shine. Here and there you see a hint of what she's capable of but it stays more of a hint. And what's up with all the jumping against walls? I've never seen any other movie where they do kicks and jumps pushing of a wall as often as in this one. a) It gets boring after a while. b) Half the time the person doing it gets thrown or kicked (so you could call it a fail).

As a fan of martial arts I gave it a 5/10 which in my case means it's OK, I didn't fall asleep. I didn't watch it for the story. If you like a movie to also have somewhat interesting story that makes some sense it's more of a 4/10.

Disappointed by Tom Yum Goong 2 (The Protector 2).

It is a half-baked movie. The problem I found with this second installment were mostly post-production stuff, e.g. lousy and disjointed music, rough and disjointed cut, bad CGI, bad image composition which make a real stunt looks like a fake stunt.

Yep. If only the movie was left as it was taken without any post- production things (like let the background were green), it might be more enjoyable than this half-finished movie.

The other problem was lack of screen time for Jeeja Yanin. In THE KICK, Jeeja Yanin didn't play the main character yet she stole the screen. Here, she barely exist although she appeared in the final fight.

Once you can get pass through the annoying things, the movie was actually have a better stuff which could make it a way better than Donnie Yen's Special ID.

TYG 2 was actually felt more like the sequel of Ong Bak instead of Tom Yum Goong.

The earlier scene where Tony Jaa taught children three martial art movement based on elephant movement reminded me to the earlier scene of Ong Bak which Tony Jaa exhibit all the movement from Muay Boran. I was excited watching the scene but unfortunately, that idea was developed into action only for .. err.. two fight scenes. The other fight scenes was all-the-stuff-we-have-seen-from-previous-movies.

The bikes-chase-scenes were kind of mixing between Tuk-Tuk chase scene and gambling gang chase scene from Ong Bak. This scene, which should had been great, unfortunately was the most unfortunate scene ruined by those half-finished post-production.

The actor which may gain benefit from this movie was Marrese Crump who played as Fighter #2. I counted there were four fight scenes in which he appeared. The first fight was so and so (He against Tony Jaa, Jeeja Yanin, and another girl). The second one was amazing (he against Tony Jaa). The third one was too fantasy and the CGI were not good. The fourth one, which also the final fight was good although the choreography was so and so.. but it was tense.

If I'm not mistaken, there will be a project, 'FORMLESS', which had him as a star and also collaborate with the same team from Tom Yum Goong 2. I can't wait to watch it but I wish Sahamongkol Film will really take time to finish the post-production as necessary. Releasing this kind of half-baked movie was really a grave mistake.

Tom Yum Goong 2 marks Tony Jaa's return since his announced retirement after the failed Ong Bak 3 and living life as a Buddhist monk. The sequel to 2005's Tom Yum Goong has Kham's elephant Khon is kidnapped once again by an evil organization that plans to blackmail Kham into assassinating the President of Katana to kick start a coup. As flimsy as that plot sounds, it is the least of its problems.

By incorporating special effects and stereoscopic 3D into the film's action scenes, Pinkaew forgets its major visual effect, namely Tony Jaa himself. The action is haphazardly cut with an embarrassingly huge amount of spatial jumps and tight close-ups that do not match, as if there was not enough usable footage. Many times the viewer enters the action after the first hit has been made. Apparently there were five editors on the project, what happened?

Tony Jaa is at not in his peak physical form, and the film seems to be hiding it from the audience. He is not as fast or hard-hitting as he once was. Jaa's choreography is restrained, for most of the group fights he just seems to be dispatching people aside as quickly as possible. And the whole time, I was waiting for Jaa to show off. Every time Ja whips out the elephant boxing style, a style that he and fight choreographer Panna invented for the previous film, are some of the film's most exciting moments. Sadly, there is very little of it.

Jeeja Yanin from Chocolate is unfortunately sidelined, she occasionally shows up to help Tony Jaa and vice versa, but otherwise there is little interaction between them. Clumsy cop comic sidekick Petchtai Wongkamlao gets some nice lines in but as seen in the first Ong Bak his strengths seem to lie in physical comedy, which he does not get to do here. The stunning Rhatha Phongam from Only God Forgives also makes a decent femme fatale, but the overabundance of supporting characters and a political assassination plot weighs everything down as the film takes on more than it can handle. Why does it have to be so complicated? Man loses elephant. Man goes and retrieves it, end of story!

RZA, together with his film The Man with the Iron Fist and self-proclaimed love of martial arts films, is forging a reputation to being a kung fu film staple. His casting as the villain is cashing in on that particular geek sheik. Atrocious acting aside, watching RZA sharing an on screen fight with Tony Jaa had me rolling my eyes. RZA movie fights just fine, but does anyone buy him gaining the upper hand on Ja?

Speaking of which, Marresse Crump, who plays the lead henchman, is a great on screen fighter who can go toe-to-toe with Tony Jaa. The first fight between Crump and Jaa had me pumped, and their last fight on a train track was the type of creative set piece I was expecting to see. Both fighters are capable of more complicated choreography but the choreographers held back with their fight. The fights always seem to be over before the audience can properly enjoy them. The first Tom Yum Goong had a video game boss level-like approach with its action sequences that kept topping each other in terms of scale and insanity, which was made it entertaining and hilarious. There is nothing to that equivalent here.

The best Prachya Pinkaew film is still Chocolate, as it had a neat creative angle and managed to incorporate its action in telling an emotional story coherently. Tom Yum Goong 2 just seems oddly distracted and unconfident about what it wants to be.

Finally saw TYG 2. I have to say this is the worst tony Jaa film so far.Not one bit because of Jaa but entirely due to its director Prachya Pinkaew. Cant believe he blew such a great opportunity after giving us Ong Bak and Tom Yum Goong.The basic plot is more or less the same as TYG 1 so no point in wasting time in talking about it.Lets get straight to the action.I don't understand this need to go on broad canvas and ruin the kind of films that you stood for.(Raid 2 looks to be going the same route from the last 2 promos).

There are several scenes were there was such a huge opportunity to choreograph a great fight scene but the director simply ruined it by his sudden obsession with wire work and poor CGI.

The biggest irritation for me was to see the director desperately trying to pass off Mareese Crump as this newest greatest martial artist on the block. Watch him just for 2 minutes and you realise its all a farce. Crump is not 1/10th as good as Prachya thinks he is.All his fight scenes with Jaa are poorly choreographed in an attempt to make Crump look good. You can clearly see Jaa has been asked to go half -speed and cut down on his moves to make it look like an even contest and it is all the more disbelieving that someone as novice in Capoeira as Crump can match upto Jaa when we have already seen how convincingly he took on the much superior Capoeira fighter Lateef Crowder in TYG1.The only scenes choreographed well are the ones that do not involve Crump , most definitely the one in the hotel room where an unarmed Jaa fights several armed men. Its a pretty short scene but expertly choreographed and such 1-2 scenes give glimpses of the Tony Jaa we know.Sadly the director had other ideas.

Jeeja Yanin is wasted and most of her stunts have wire work. Less said about RZA the better.This one needed a villain who could match up to the level of Jaa , someone like Scott Adkins perhaps.Tony Jaa has admittedly slowed down and looks a bit overweight than his usual lean self. age is catching up.I know Fast and furious is a crap series but i am hoping to b surprised by Jaa's outing in it. Hope they utilize his potential.