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PLOT: A Thai village boy, heir to a family tradition as a protector of royal elephants, travels to Sydney, Australia and wreaks havoc on the Asian underworld when the two elephants in his care are poached.
A reader recently suggested that if a movie was really bad, but I enjoyed it anyway, it deserves at least two and a half stars.
I'm using his rule of thumb on The Protector -- Thai action filmmaker Prachya Pinkaew's messed-up followup to his brilliant Ong Bak. For the "enjoyable" part, look no further than the martial arts world's most riveting new star, Tony Jaa, who singlehandedly makes a laughable movie watchable -- while breaking a few hundred bad guys' arms and legs.
What happened to The Protector (which indeed was known as Ong Bak 2 while in development) can pretty much be guessed. With a modest international hit behind them, Pinkaew and Jaa got some new "name" partners (The Weinsteins, Quentin Tarantino) who possibly sent a memo or two.
With a bland international locale, tacked-on "urban" music, themes and bad English dubbing, The Protector reeks of someone's decision that Ong Bak was "a little too Thai." Add moronic dialogue, composition that changes mid-scene and editing that might have been done by a blind man and you have a movie that could screen in film schools as an object lesson.
As in Ong Bak, muy Thai artist Jaa plays a rural villager on the trail of a stolen treasured object. Then it was a Buddha. This time, it's a pair of elephants, a baby and daddy (Jaa's character Kham is heir to a tradition as a protector of royal elephants).
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How far does one take a stolen elephant? These two end up in Sydney, Australia. How Kham ends up there is choppily portrayed, in a few quick fight scenes shot in an annoying, grainy "dreamlike" filter used unpredictably through the film for no apparent reason other than perhaps botched processing.
The point is to take Jaa to a locale where they speak English (though Jaa doesn't), the better to use atrocious, unpredictable dubbing -- even among characters who in other scenes are speaking Thai to each other. It's also a Westernized locale, and an opportunity to toss in "rad" stuff, like a striptease shot like a BET video, and a brawl between Kham and a mob of BMXers and bladers wielding, um, fluorescent lightbulbs.
All of it is forgiven, however, as Jaa tracks his elephants down to a dragon-lady empress-wannabe named Madame Rose (Xing Jing) and takes on armies of bad guys, many of them hulking farengs (white guys) the size of small houses. (The comic aftermath of one such scene, with Jaa surrounded by bodies, is like a mini-Atlanta scene from Gone With The Wind). In scenes up to four minutes in length, Jaa flips forwards, backwards and laterally, does impossible splits, smashes faces and bends limbs in crunchingly impossible angles.
Imagine the war stories these stuntmen could tell.
BOTTOM LINE: With obvious international marketing pressure to make his next movie, y'know, a little less Thai, director Prachya Pinkaew has followed up his brilliant Ong Bak with an ineptly edited, badly scripted and atrociously dubbed pudding. However, Ong Bak star Tony Jaa is still amazing to watch as he does his own stunts and breaks a few hundred arms and legs.
(This film is rated 14-A)