Raging Phoenix

I wasn't expecting much from JeeJa Yanin's original film ("Chocolate"), but her physical talents were showcased in spectacular fashion and won me over despite the shortcomings in terms of scriptwriting. That film grew on me more and more after repeat viewings, but there still was room for improvement in the pacing and storyline elements. Enter "Raging Phoenix", which not only avoids a sophomore slump for JeeJa, but actually surpasses "Chocolate" in total entertainment value.

One way it does this is to allow JeeJa to express her camera presence and charisma. This was surprising to me personally, because her previous role in "Chocolate" was so introverted and robotic that it was essentially impossible to determine whether or not this girl could steal a scene without beating someone's brains in. In "Raging Phoenix", however, she really cuts loose during the opening half as she jokes around, engages in some funny dialogue, and participates in some light-hearted fight scenes involving drunken styles of martial arts. That one-vs-many boat brawl is – now wait for it – a boat-load of fun. JeeJa exhibits a natural likability that her fellow countryman Tony Jaa severely lacks. Don't misunderstand me, because I am a fan of Tony's films, but he has some serious limitations as all of his screen presence is earned through his (phenomenal) physical skills. JeeJa, on the other hand, portrays her character in a way that is very endearing. In other words, I'd love to have her as a younger sister. This charm is a major reason why this film is so entertaining. When the action scenes are bridged by good "non-action stuff", that's a huge plus.

The mood gets more serious when the kidnapping plot line is fleshed out more, but even here the film stays attention-grabbing with an interesting twist involving drug dealing. Now, I'm not saying that the script is incredibly strong. It's not going to win any awards in that realm, nor is it as strong as more dramatic action films like "Kill Zone" (2005), but it does build anticipation for the finale and establishes characters a bit more than usual. In addition, "Raging Phoenix" one-ups "Chocolate" by introducing a very strong lead antagonist during the latter half (played by Roongtawan Jindasing – Asian Pacific Women's Bodybuilding Champion). This lady is one tough son-of-a-gun who proves incredibly difficult to take down, which automatically makes things a bit more exciting than having JeeJa beat down random stuntmen the entire time.

Which brings us to the action scenes. There are some one-vs-many scenarios early on, but that shifts decisively towards one-on-one and two-on-one battles afterward, which results in some outstanding fist-a-cuffs. The "purists" need to stop complaining every time wires are used. I'm getting sick and tired of their whining, especially regarding movies like this that use wires effectively. The cavern hideout finale lasts a solid 30 minutes, and Roongtawan Jindasing hands out a great deal of damage to JeeJa and her buddies. It escalates to the point of making one's hairs stand on end, especially when JeeJa gets her second wind and slugs it out in EPIC fashion. That sequence must be an instant classic (at least in terms of girl vs girl mayhem). Heck, this entire film is an instant classic.

If you liked "Chocolate", you need to see this. If you didn't like "Chocolate", you need to see this anyways. It's truly an excellent action film, and quite possibly the best girl fighting movie ever made.

OK i have to admit i am generous when i give an 8, because i was to other movies as well a couple years ago. I know when i watch a martial arts movie to not look too much at the story, more on the fights. But since i started to go back on martial arts around 2 years ago and started my collection(which is now over 300 movies) i find the same problem going on with every THAI martial arts movie. To the Tony Jaa's to the unknown's. The fights are always very impressive, but the story is always CRAP !!! This movie is no exception. Some could say the initial synopsis is not that bad, gang abducting womens and heroes going after them. But where TAKEN(with Liam Neeson) succeeded in that department, this movie does not, going from one weird thing to the other and so on. The heroine training is pretty good and the initial plot seem pretty find, its later it become like "whatever". At least the fight are VERY impressive and well choreographed so you never get bored and always stay in the movie. But i would wish sometimes the Thais would learned that a good yet simple plot of a movie is the best way to showcase awesome martial arts. You don't need fancy stuff, you don't need weird stuff, you don't need stuff the audience would be like "huh....ok" . With Thais movie, its always the same thing, either a relic has been stolen and the hero goes after it, or its supernatural stuff. I don't know, maybe they should check the simple, yet effective formula of the US movies of the 90s. Hero got his ass kick, go back and train to a master, come back and kick the ass of the bad guy. I don't know... sometimes in martial arts the simpler plots work best, if you have good fighting to display and i can assure you this movie has.... Please people from thailand... leave the supernatural out of the martial arts movie... we don't wanna a cross over between star wars and bloodsport... we want just good ol martial arts.

RAGING PHOENIX, a high-kicking Thai martial arts film, marks Jeeja Yanin's follow-up to her outstanding debut, CHOCOLATE. While proving to be a mildly entertaining movie with some great fight action to recommend it, it's an inevitable disappointment to those of us weaned on the likes of ONG BAK and WARRIOR KING, as it just doesn't hold a torch to the calibre of those two movies – or, indeed, Yanin's aforementioned debut.

The problem with this movie is pretty much everything aside from the action: the characters are cardboard-thin, the plot is shallow and the script is completely stupid. By the time we're introduced to the storyline of the villains harvesting the tears of their victims, you'll be rolling your eyes and saying "oh please". In addition, the acting is strictly drama school, and that includes Yanin; none of these guys would make it in a film requiring real performances.

Good news, then, is that the action is what this film is all about, and it lifts what could have been a debacle into something pretty entertaining; no WARRIOR KING, certainly, but something to be enjoyed at least once. The dance-infused combat sees Janin and her anarchist rebel friends battling a series of nefarious villains, and it inevitably builds up into a massive battle in the bad guys' lair (a ridiculous CGI underground chamber).

At the end, Yanin finally meets her match – a hulking Amazonian fighter by the name of Roongtawan Jindasing, a real-life bodybuilder and judo expert. The resultant fight takes in multiple locations, some exquisite camera (the bridge scene in particular) and goes on for about half an hour without ever getting dull; seasoned action director Panna Rittikrai ensures he gets the maximum mayhem for his money.

Thai sensation JeeJa Yanin burst onto the martial arts movie scene in 2008 with Chocolate, wowing fight fans worldwide with her amazing performance as adorable but bad-ass autistic girl Zen (and earning her the title of 'the female Tony Jaa' in the process). Expectations were naturally high for her next film Raging Phoenix, but although Yanin once again displays incredible agility, skill, and speed, the film as a whole must be considered something of a disappointment, lacking the simplicity, charm, originality, and raw power of its predecessor.

The script flits brazenly from one nonsensical scene to the next and is irritatingly indifferent to its main gimmick, the drunken fighting style of Meyraiyuth, so carefully developed in the first half of the film yet completely ignored in the second; almost as brash are the fight scenes that vary wildly in style from bone-crunching realism to comic-book excess (with naff wire-work employed for 'cool' gravity defying moves), most of which are so highly choreographed that they are more like immaculate dance routines than amazing displays of martial arts prowess (impressive to watch, certainly, but hardly adrenaline pumping). Meanwhile, Yanin desperately struggles to create another endearing character in Deu, but thanks to far too many embarrassingly over-melodramatic moments, her street urchin with attitude comes across as more pathetic than sympathetic.

Throughout the film, there are plenty of scenes that display promise, but all ultimately fail to deliver the levels of genius that have made recent Muay Thai movies like Ong-Bak, Warrior King and Chocolate so memorable; the fact that this potential for awesomeness is so frequently and readily wasted makes Raging Phoenix an all the more frustrating experience.

An unsatisfying 5.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

Fans of martial arts action films in this region would find reason to celebrate recently with the introduction of Iko Uwais showcasing some combat Silat in Merantau and while I had counted him in amongst peers such as Tony Jaa, Jija Yanin stands out for being the only female of the lot who can dish out as much punishment as she could receive, and breakthrough performances aside, I think the real test comes in the follow up film, if it's either more of the same, or if it'll have enough bandwidth to allow the martial artist to go some distance from their maiden performance.

And I had enjoyed Raging Phoenix a lot more than Chocolate, which I felt had plenty of room in which to improve upon, especially in the editing department which didn't quite do that film justice in having Jija's character seem to go through each fight sequence like a video game, beginning each scene with the on-guard position. However, that film allowed her to showcase a whole range of moves and weapons, and in this one, her character sticks to one, which is a Chinese drunken fist equivalent, where the pupil downs gallons of alcohol, and through that intoxicated state, learn to internalize the alcohol and purge that high energy into something more hard hitting, channeling that deep down hurt and heartfelt pain they have to intrinsically possess into power through the knuckles.

The form of the martial arts clearly has plenty of Muay Thai in it, with the usual exploitation of elbows and knees to inflict maximum damage, though this time round the choreographers smartly fused some hip-hop break dancing moves into the martial arts, since those dance movies would already prep you that those spins and turns, and feigns with the feet, could actually translate to deadly assault steps to incapacitate any enemy. Yes you read me right, but it didn't turn out as bad as it sounded, and soon enough you just won't feel that it's an amalgamation of two different forms, at least not when the catchy Thai hip hop song Yong- Wai stops playing.

As the story goes (yes, you still need one), it was a wee bit different from the usual to say the least, though the inevitable melodramatic moments did prolong the runtime without welcome. The narrative for Raging Phoenix played out just like its title, where it starts off really slowly and in some ways quite the bore, before its form got junked and transformed, into something more engaging as the story progressed, right after Jija's Deu gets saved from the clutches of the evil Jaguar Gang, whose mission statement is to kidnap girls with unique pheromones. Cue obligatory training montage as she becomes the protégé of Sanim (Kazu Patrick Tang), Dog, Pig and Bull, and convoluted initiation rites later, she gets accepted into the vigilante group, seeking out the Jaguars to exact their individual vendettas.

Ranging Phoenix didn't turn out to be a one-woman show, which meant Jija had to step aside to allow her co-stars to shine, especially since her character is the rookie in this form of martial arts, and have to rely on the others to save her hide at first. It was a little painful to watch since we all know that this girl can really kick butt, though it made it all the more sweeter when she finally does. What she cannot do though, despite her new hairdo and cute- as-a-button features, is to play that romantic role given that there's a subplot involving unrequited love with her trainer Sanim, which was somewhat essential to fuel that new found strength (from depression actually) in the finale.

​A Thai film would seem incomplete without the obligatory evil transsexual, and Raging had one featured early for some comic relief. The chief villain, played by Roongtawan Jindasing, a body building champion, cuts a figure quite similar to Grace Jones's May Day in A View to a Kill, matching our heroine strength for strength, though triumphing with her D-cups, which I thought in a battle sequence she had used to knock Deu off her feet. Fight sequences had resorted to MTV-styled quick cut editing, though it did pace itself nicely through some slow- motion when required to allow the audience to take it all in. Fights were also nicely framed, especially when killer moves get employed, or when director Rashane Limtrakul decides to want to show you just how close and realistic the actors and stunt crew can get when they pull off hard hitting, bone-crunching action.

I would have thought that the film would have featured some outtakes – you know, for the filmmakers to show off that "real fights, real injuries" tagline, but to my surprise there was absolutely none. I would have loved to see whether some suspicion in the use of wire-work could be proved through the outtakes, since there were definitely some moves which were too hard to believe they can be executed without employing one. Padding also was visible though, for safety's sake of course, but don't let that distract you as much as it did to me.

Raging Phoenix isn't perfect, but it is yet another milestone for Jija Yanin to prove what she can do. Call me a fan as I am liking her films already, and can't wait to see her in more action films!