Brave

After a gang of organised criminals kidnap his brother, ex-con Bee (Mike B.) is left no choice but to follow their demands and break into a bank to steal its customers' credit card details—a course of action that leads to all kinds of danger…

Having proved his action credentials in Tony Jaa's excellent Muay Thai movie Ong Bak, stuntman Mike B. gets the opportunity to show the world that he can be more than just a fall guy—and completely blows it!

As the unlikely hero of action comedy Brave, Mike B. once again performs an impressive array of death-defying stunts and martial arts moves, but fails to deliver the charisma and screen presence that is also key to becoming a true martial arts movie superstar. Although his character is clearly intended to be a lovable rogue, he actually comes off as a thoroughly charmless smart-arse throughout; it's a performance that is unlikely to win many fans.

Mike's bid for stardom is further hampered by lousy direction (loads of wobbly camera-work and rapid-fire editing which frustratingly obscures a lot of the stunt work), some painfully unfunny comedy, and an equally irritating turn from fat Malaysian comedian Afdlin Shauki as Bee's useless brother.

This 2007 Thai action movie was sort of a swing and a miss.

But I am getting ahead of myself here. When I sat down in 2022 to watch "Brave", from writers Nut Nualpang and Thanapon Maliwan, then I virtually had no idea what I was in for here, aside from it being a Thai action movie.

The movie started out quite alright, but then quickly grew stale and sort of monotonous. Why? Well, because the storyline was flaccid and didn't have much any proper contents to it. The plot felt like it was written by a high school student having to write an action story for a term paper. It was all flash and bang and nothing else.

The action in the movie was good, and in quite an abundance, I have to say. But there is only so much that action can do to carry a movie without a proper storyline or script. "Brave" sort of felt like a watered-down imitation of the 2011 Indonesian movie "The Raid".

I wasn't familiar with the cast in "Brave", but they put on fair enough performances, despite having virtually no script to work with. Michael B. (playing Bee or B) actually was quite good at the action and martial arts. This was my first time to see him in a movie though.

If you enjoy action movies, then "Brave" is not the best of choices, unless you prefer brainless action movie where the virtually is nothing else going on but the action. I managed to sit through the movie, though it was quite an ordeal, as it was lacking contents in the story department.

My rating of "Brave" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

(2007) Brave (In Thai with English subtitles)

Co-written and co-directed by Thanapon Maliwa with one of the stars of the move who was also credited as co-director by the name of Afdlin Shauki, he has a small role as Tang. The movie has Bee (Mike B.) entering into a bank for the intention of stealing costumers credit card information. When he succeeds, he later finds out that his brother has been kidnapped. And in exchange for his release, he would have to deliver that flashdrive his brother had stolen earlier. To where they wanted him to deliver, the criminal organization eventually decide whatever they want to do away with him.

I just watched the new "International version" of the film. I must say that it is an improvement over the original Thai version which I watched previously. It should work better for the international audience. I think Ong-Bak was even re-cut for the US. Most of the humor and unnecessary dialogue has been removed. This version seems to place more emphasis on the fighting which really is the strong point of this film. The script is still weak in parts. Then again, what Thai action film doesn't have script deficiencies?! Overall, I'd say the International version is an improvement and it is not a bad little film. Hope to see it on video shelves in the US one day.