Note: as usual, I recommend reading this only after you’ve seen the movie.
How the hell do you follow a movie with a classic freeway cars vs. tank battle and a legendary 27.86 mile cars vs. planes gun/grappling hook/wrestling fight? Well, we already had a good idea from the trailers: with cars that skydive and jump from skyscraper to skyscraper and with Jason Statham. The day after my first viewing I feel like FURIOUS SEVEN is probly not as good as FAST FIVE or FURIOUS 6, but it’s in the same range at least, which is a feat. And due to real life this silly fictional world turns very emotional at the end. I suspect that despite all the effort put into automotive insanity this will primarily be remembered as the one that says goodbye to Paul Walker.
It’s a blessing because really, when has a tragically passed-on star been able to have such a meta farewell in a movie? The character of Brian O’Conner gets to drive off into the sunset and the public gets to share in the send off as a narrating Vin Diesel/Dominic Torretto pay tribute simultaneously in and out of character. Heath Ledger might’ve had a better last big performance, but he was left hanging on the side of a building.
(It’s a little unclear what it means on the movie level, though. Are Brian and Mia and the kids driving off to be far away from Dom so they can be sure to stay out of trouble? Or is Dom just not planning to visit his own sister, best friend, niece and nephew if he’s not shooting guns anymore? Maybe he’s just assuming that now that he’s a dad Brian’s not gonna hang out anymore?) (read the rest of this shit…)
This is not just the latest Dolph Lundgren picture, this is the passion project he’s been trying to make for years. He co-wrote the screenplay (IMDb says John Hyams did a rewrite), and originally planned to direct, but instead gave it to Ekachai Uekrongtham, who is best known for BEAUTIFUL BOXER.
At one point there were rumors that Seagal was going to co-star with Lundgren. Instead we ended up with the more acrobatic all-star team-up of Dolph and Tony Jaa (in his first English role). As you can see, Michael Jai White is also there in a supporting role, along with Peter Weller and Ron Perlman as the skin trader. According to IMDb we should also look out for Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Conan Stevens. The second unit director/action and stunt choreographer is Dian Hristov was Dolph’s stunt double in THE EXPENDABLES 3 and ONE IN THE CHAMBER. He’s also been Seagal’s double through most of the DTV era.
How can the same shit happen to the same elephant twice?
The first thing that jumped out at me in TOM YUM GOONG 2 was the amount of digital effects. Part of what made us fall in love with Tony Jaa’s movies ONG BAK and TOM YUM GOONG a decade or so ago was that they were refreshingly organic. All real stunts, very few visual effects, for the most part not even using wires. So it’s jarring to suddenly see him dodging obvious digital cars and motorcycles, ducking a digital subway, running from a digital explosion. Of course all movies are fake, but that’s more of a low budget version of a DIE HARD type of action than a Thai style, where we’re used to seeing real guys get knocked off of real trucks and get back up for real.
By the way, who’s the sorry motherfucker who found it necessary to introduce green screens to the Thai film industry? There’s this whole great sequence of Jaa fighting motorcycles on a rooftop, and I’m sure most of the stunts are real, but because the background is clearly fake you start questioning the whole thing. They even use green screens for his closeups when he’s holding onto the top of a car. I guess we’re past the days when Thai stuntmen were the crazy motherfuckers who would do anything. They must’ve finally gotten a union. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tony Jaa must be officially out of the jungle now because after finishing the long awaited TOM YUM GOONG 2 and in the midst of shooting THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS 7 and a Dolph Lundgren movie called SKIN TRADE he just announced this on Facebook:
I am really excited to tell you that I will be starring in SPL 2, the sequel to the action thriller SPL (Sha Po Lang). I am equally excited to have Wu Jen the star of Legendary Assassin as my co-star. There are some really neat additional cast members that you will hear about soon and the action will be amazing. SPL 2 will shoot next Spring after I finish the shoot of Skin Trade with my friend Dolph Lundgren. (read the rest of this shit…)
“Fierce as a lion, strong as an elephant. Sadly after today he’ll disappear forever.”
I can’t tell if this is gonna be any good, but I do know that 1) I personally requested in CLiNT magazine for them to shoot Tony Jaa in 3D, and they did it 2) it is the sequel to maybe my favorite straight-ahead martial arts movie of the 2000s. (Or top 5 if I put it up against KILL BILL.)
One thing I really hope for, though there’s no evidence in this trailer, is an attempt to one-up part 1’s famous long take fight scene. It doesn’t have to be the same kind of thing, but maybe some other spectacular idea we haven’t quite seen on that level before. One thing that makes TOM YUM GOONG so great is that they were clearly intent on outdoing everything they achieved in ONG BAK. They seem to have lost that spirit in later movies as Jaa started having a hard time living up to his legend or whatever was going on that caused him to abandon the filming of the ONG BAK sequels and become a monk for a while.
Now they have JeeJa around, which could help in the upping-the-ante department. And I like that RZA is the bad guy, since he is already kind of a TOM YUM GOONG villain for having rescored it for the bastardized Weinstein version THE PROTECTOR. (Not that he did a bad – or good- job. In fact, if the music on this trailer is from the movie I wouldn’t be against RZA taking a crack at it.)
There’s alot of action movie news going around (I guess Jet Li’s not gonna be in EXPENDABLES 2, and they’re trying to get Donnie Yen?) but to me the big one is TOM YUM GOONG 2 (aka THE PROTECTOR 2). We already knew that Tony Jaa had returned from the monastery to do this sequel. We maybe were so fixated on his return to civilization that we didn’t properly acknowledge what good news it is that Jaa has patched things up with director Prachya Pinkaew (ONG-BAK, TOM YUM GOONG, CHOCOLATE, ELEPHANT WHITE) after their falling out over ONG-BAK 2: THE WEIRDENING.
Now comes word that TYG 2 will co-star Jija Yanin, that badass little asskicker who starred in CHOCOLATE and RAGING PHOENIX. (thanks to rewrite in the comments for tipping me off.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Well, if you haven’t heard already, it’s being reported that a couple days ago Tony Jaa literally shaved his head, rode an elephant up to a Buddhist temple and took his vows to become a monk. The most complete article on the matter is at twitch.
Usually I prefer to wait to see a movie on the big screen, but when I saw an import DVD of ONG BAK 2 I just couldn’t resist. What on earth is that guy gonna jump off of or over in this one? Who or what will find their bones crushed by his bones? And the thought of that little guy running around on top of elephants… I don’t know man. I wasn’t gonna sit around waiting if I didn’t have to.
I think we all agree that Tony Jaa is the closest thing we got to a New Jackie Chan. Not that his persona or humor is the same or anything. But he’s an inhumanly great martial artist and stuntman whose movies make our jaws drop with feats of physical prowess and death defiance. They don’t make too many of those these days so it’s a big deal. I don’t know about you but I really hadn’t quite had a “holy shit, a guy really did that!?” reaction like that since the heyday of Jackie. (read the rest of this shit…)
real title: TOM-YUM-GOONG
should be the title: WHERE ARE MY ELEPHANTS?
Well, I can’t say I didn’t know what I was stepping into. The import DVD of the newest Tony Jaa movie (from the same director as ONG-BAK) has been circling around forever and a day now but I never got around to seeing it. Now those gangsters Bob and Noodles Weinstein have unleashed their bastardized and cut-up version across the screens of America. I knew it was probaly gonna be dubbed, I knew it was shortened (that’s what the Weinsteins do: buy other people’s movies, then cut parts out of them), and I knew it was re-scored.
And it was actually that last part that reeled me in like a sucker fish. Because in the newspaper ads it says in giant letters, almost as big as the title: “MUSIC BY RZA.” (read the rest of this shit…)
You see, there’s this small town in Thailand somewhere (possibly called Ong-Bak, unless that is only the name of the buddha statue there, but the subtitles led me to believe it was the name of both). Anyway, there’s a young man there named Ting (played by Tony Jaa) who is working hard to prove himself as a master of Muay Thai Kickboxing, or Thai Fist. That’s quite enough bullshit for a young man to have on his mind but then some other asshole has to sneak in and cut off the head of their buddha statue so he can sell it. All the old ladies start crying that the town is not protected anymore so before you know it this little old country boy is headed for big bad Bangkok to get the shit back. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
Toxic on The Shrouds: “Thanks guys. In a way, having to deal with shitty people was a distraction. The people at the hospital who…” May 6, 00:15
Skani on The Shrouds: “Toxic, I’m so sorry to hear about what you’ve been going through.” May 5, 18:30
VERN on The Shrouds: “Sorry to hear about that, Toxic. I can’t even imagine. Yeah, I really don’t know, I could definitely imagine a…” May 5, 18:24
Michael T on The Shrouds: “My first thought when I heard about this movie was this sounds similar to Vern’s book. Also, I sent you…” May 5, 17:49
Curt on Sinners: “Having finally seen it, I will add to the growing consensus that Hailee Steinfeld looked like Debi Mazar in that…” May 5, 17:17
Curt on Sinners: “Having finally seen it, I will add to the growing consensus that Hailee Steinfeld looked like Debi Mazar in that…” May 5, 17:15
Bill Reed on The Legend of Ochi: “This has Willem Dafoe, so I am legally obligated to watch it, but your review has made me even more…” May 5, 12:40
Toxic on The Shrouds: “I remember trying to post a link on your article about NIKETOWN to the site of a real company that…” May 5, 11:38
Bill Reed on Sinners: “Caught this at the drive-in (we still have those here), and liked it, though it started raining pretty hard in…” May 5, 06:35
Sophie Russell on Barton Fink: “Wow, that really was a transformative month in pop culture! From Pearl Jam’s explosive debut to Siouxsie and the Banshees…” May 5, 04:58
JTS on Havoc: “That Max Payne comparison is very on point. The florid opening voiceover, the gritty stylized city, the perhaps-a-little-too-complicated crime noir…” May 4, 08:46
KayKay on Sixty Minutes: “I liked EXTERRITORIAL. TAKEN crossed with FLIGHTPLAN, the latter which I recall, was also directed by a German. Well paced,…” May 4, 07:58
Dreadguacamole on Havoc: “Here’s a fun (very fluffy) piece on how he went about turning several different locations in Wales into a Gotham-like…” May 4, 07:37
Timo on Sixty Minutes: “The other German Netflix action film CJ mentioned above, *Exterritorial*, came out this week. It’s really good. The story didn’t…” May 3, 22:45
Timo on Havoc: “https://thefilmmakerspodcast.com/gareth-evans-havoc-the-raid-and-gangs-of-london-director-and-writer-on-his-process/ Here is a podcast episode where Gareth Evans explains what happened with the long post production. It was a…” May 3, 22:38
Note: as usual, I recommend reading this only after you’ve seen the movie.
At one point there were rumors that Seagal was going to co-star with Lundgren. Instead we ended up with the more acrobatic all-star team-up of Dolph and Tony Jaa (in his first English role). As you can see, Michael Jai White is also there in a supporting role, along with Peter Weller and Ron Perlman as the skin trader. According to IMDb we should also look out for Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Conan Stevens. The second unit director/action and stunt choreographer is Dian Hristov was Dolph’s stunt double in THE EXPENDABLES 3 and ONE IN THE CHAMBER. He’s also been Seagal’s double through most of the DTV era.
How can the same shit happen to the same elephant twice?
Tony Jaa must be officially out of the jungle now because after finishing the long awaited TOM YUM GOONG 2 and in the midst of shooting THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS 7 and a Dolph Lundgren movie called SKIN TRADE he just announced this on Facebook:
There’s alot of action movie news going around (I guess 
Well, if you haven’t heard already, it’s being reported that a couple days ago Tony Jaa literally shaved his head, rode an elephant up to a Buddhist temple and took his vows to become a monk. The most complete article on the matter is at 
Usually I prefer to wait to see a movie on the big screen, but when I saw an import DVD of ONG BAK 2 I just couldn’t resist. What on earth is that guy gonna jump off of or over in this one? Who or what will find their bones crushed by his bones? And the thought of that little guy running around on top of elephants… I don’t know man. I wasn’t gonna sit around waiting if I didn’t have to.
real title: TOM-YUM-GOONG
(aka MUAY THAI WARRIOR) 
