Martial arts fans will be pleased to finally see the Blu-ray release of Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior from Fox Home Entertainment on February 2nd, 2010.
The 2003 Thai action movie is essentially a showcase for the marital arts skills of star Tony Jaa, and served as his break out movie.
After the head of the Ong-Bak is stolen from his village, Ting sets off to Bangkok in order to recover it and get it back in time for the sacred festival.
In Bangkok Ting meets up with ex-villager Humlae, who now calls himself George and has rejected the ways of the village in favour of a more modern lifestyle involving a lot of gambling.
Humlae steals all of Ting’s money and takes it to an illegal boxing match, where be gambles it all away.
After chasing Humlae down, Ting ends up in the middle of the fighting and his skills are revealed.
The movie plays out as a cat and mouse game, with Ting trying to track down the Ong-Bak head, all the time getting deeper and deeper into the underworld illegal fighting scene.
While the storyline is not overly strong, naturally there is plenty of fighting to be seen and Tony Jaa’s Muay Thai skills are shown off to great effect.
Overall I found the movie to be pretty enjoyable, with exciting action scenes and enough of a story to string it together.
Along with Jaa the cast includes Petchthai Wongkamlao, Pumwaree Yodkamol, Rungrawee Borrijindakul and Chetwut Wacharakun.
Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior was directed by Prachya Pinkaew, who went on to direct Chocolate.
The movie was pretty well received by the critics - it earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of 85% and an IMDb score of 7.2/10.
Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior also took in $4.6M at the US box office.
The video on the disc is an AVC 1080p encode at 18 Mbps, and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1.
The image quality on this release is not the greatest, as you might expect from a relatively low budget Asian movie.
Full resolution PNG screen captures taken directly from the disc can be seen on the details page for Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior.
The main audio is lossless DTS-HD Master Audio with 5.1 channels - 24 bits resolution at 48 kHz.
The original Thai soundtrack is present, along with an English dub that is also encoded with DTS-HD Master Audio.
The disc is a single layer BD25, with 21.7 GB used and is coded for Region A.
This release includes a number of interesting featurettes and supplements.
The Movements Of Muay Thai offers a closer look at the martial art, and we are treated to a taping of a live Tony Jaa performance that was shot in France.
There is a Rap Music Video featuring Tony Jaa, along with a ‘making of’ for the Music Video.
Extra footage and behind the scenes shots feature in Selected B Roll, which is well worth a look to see just how real the effects and stunts in the movie actually are.
Lastly there is a selection of Promo Videos, Teasers and Trailers from France, Thailand and the USA, including a couple featuring RZA.
Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior is pretty decent release from Fox Home Entertainment for this ground breaking martial arts action film.
The retail price is $24.99, or order it right now at Amazon for $15.99, saving 36%!
Extras:
- Live Tony Jaa Performance
- The Movements Of Muay Thai
- Rap Music Video With Tony Jaa
- Making of the Music Video
- Selected B Roll
- Promo Video featuring RZA
- Trailers
- About the Film Transfer
Synopsis:
Tony Jaa, the fighting superstar “destined for film’s martial arts pantheon” (New York Daily News) electrifies as Ting, a religious young warrior who swears an oath of peace. But when the head of Ong-Bak, his village’s sacred statue, is stolen, he heads for Bangkok to recover it from a ruthless crime lord at any cost. In a film Time calls “exhilarating,” with relentless, fever-pitched action free of stunt doubles and special effects. Jaa performs “moves that would send Jackie Chan to the chiropractor!” (Maxim)