Tom Yum Goong

I have an Asian wave going on again.

Tom Yum Goong under its strange name is the latest of the new Thai star Tony Jaa who was put under the spotlight by the instant cult Ong Bak, a proud B movie that feature insane stunts & martial arts under the usual B "nonsense" (ie no plot).
Where do you go from there?

I didn't have great expectations for this, all I wanted was more of the same as Ong Bak.
But I have to say that this outing was a disappointment.
It really feels like after Ong Bak's success, they got plenty of money and didn't really know what to spend it on. So they set out to go "bigger", moved to Australia, got themselves some huge tracking shots, but all in all it falls flat.

I mean Ong Bak had a really thin script, but it still managed to hold itself together, evenly dispensing various action scenes (chases on foot or on tuktuk, fights, etc) and linking them logically.
Here, the plot is even more "nonsensic", it's hard to care about this elephant story, there's even less character development than in Ong Bak, you could cut all the 2ary characters out of the movie and see no difference. I'm not saying that I'd watch such a movie for story or characters for example. But here it really feels badly put together...
It would be OK if the action made you forget that but the set pieces feel too far apart and are reduced to "plain" fights, breaking arms or legs. Most of the stunts have been seen in Ong Bak anyway.
Obviously you get highlights and you still have the odd jaw dropping move: about 1h in you have a Muay Thai vs Capoeira fight that in itself makes the whole thing worthwhile. But other than that it's quite overblown... A shame...

I hope Jaa will get himself the right ccoperators in the future to deliver some truly great action...