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| This film is centered around an orphaned young man who sets out on a quest to retrieve the head of a sacred statue, which has been stolen from his small village by local thugs.
One dark night a former native of a rural Thai village has his men steal the head of the town’s ONG BAK (Buddha statue) to win favour with ruthless Bangkok crime boss Khom Tuan. The locals regard the theft as a catastrophe as they believe bad fortune will fall over their village, and seek a champion to retrieve their lost treasure.
They find their man in Ting (Tony Jaa), an orphaned youngster raised at the local temple, and schooled by Pra Kru, a kindly monk, in an ancient system of Muay Thai ‘Nine Body Weapons’. Ting travels to the mean streets of Bangkok, where he's forced to compete in illegal street fights, taking on both local and foreign opponents to try to win the head of ONG BAK from the pitiless underworld kingpin.
There is no question that Tony Jaa is in fact amazing, able to battle with amazing speed and agility. He performs all sorts of stunts within a chase through the streets of Bangkok, as well as throughout the rest of the film, exhibiting all his flawless talents.
These stunning moves are made even more breathtaking when you take into account that no CGI, no wires or stunt doubles were used in this must-see modern martial arts movie.
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Here's what our members thought of this title. 5 stars = very good, 1 star = poor.
 |  | "I have taught you the art of Muay Thai, and passed on the knowledge. Now, I ask you never to use it..."
A welcome departure from the effects driven, wire reliant action movies of today, Ong-bak is the real thing, a violent love letter to a lesser known martial art. A brutal, hard contact fighting style full of knees, kicks and killer elbows, Muay Thai is the message, and leading man Tony Jaa is the messenger. Compensating for his baby face and lean, 5½ foot frame, Jaa routinely jumps two metres in the air, slamming his fists or feet of fury into bad guys with the power and speed of a runaway train. To see him in action is to know you'll never call him shorty in person.
The excuse for action, otherwise known as the plot, is simplicity itself. Trained in the deadly art and high-minded philosophy of Muay Thai, eager disciple Ting (Jaa) is subsequently instructed never to use it. It's just too powerful, you see. But if we've learned anything from virtually every Chuck Norris film ever made, it's that no matter how hard a hero tries to solve his conflicts peacefully, it always comes back to fisticuffs in the end. For Ting, it's a mission to save his village. Long believed to watch over his people in much the same way as those old glowing stones in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the statue of beloved deity Ong-bak is beheaded by the villainous Don (Wannakit Sirioput), who bags the head and scarpers for Bangkok. With the villagers suddenly godless and unprotected, they send Ting to get it back.
As expected, this is not a mission where reason, tact and diplomacy save the day. Not when the majority of the action takes place in blood splattered fight clubs where greedy, desperate men bid on strong, angry ones. Navigating the big city with help from a couple of sidekicks, student Muay (Pumwaree Yodkamol) and avaricious Humlae (Perttary Wongkamlao), Ting sets his sights on a powerful crime syndicate, briskly working his way from hired muscle to featured henchmen and, because it's more like a videogame than anything else, a couple of end-of-level style, near unbeatable baddies.
Besides avoiding wires and effects, Jaa and his co-stars are all about doing their own stunts. Seeing Jaa jump two metres in the air to strangle a bad guy with his thighs is all the more impressive because you know it's actually him doing it, and that he's doing it without any help. "The stuntmen who came in to this film had to be very skillful and put in a lot of training," explains Jaa through an interpreter. "In some scenes, just to make it look real, they had to have real fights. Sometimes the punches would really hit you, and you'd be dizzy for a bit. It's like boxing. You get hurt, but it's a sport." As for how badly injured his sporting activities left him, Jaa admits "...I tore a ligament, I sprained my ankle which put me out for a month, and the scene where they did the flames, I burnt my eyelashes." Seeing what he goes through in the movie, jumping through barb wire hoops, crashing through walls and running over people's shoulders, it's a wonder his injuries weren't more severe. Jaa is a true action hero, a natural successor to Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan with a style all of his own.
There was once a time when the martial arts were a closely guarded secret. As late as the Sixties, Bruce Lee was chastised by his elders for revealing the secrets of Kung Fu to the West. But times have changed, the world has shrunk and freedom of information is what life is all about. Says Jaa, "To be able to demonstrate the art of Muay Thai for the rest of the world to see was always my goal." Mission accomplished, then.
Wildly exciting with one incredible action set-piece after another, Ong-bak is a classic blokey movie, intense but amusing with lots to get the pulse racing. Add beer, pizza and mates, and you're looking at a perfect night in.
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