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Monday, August 16, 2010

[3.50/10] Ong Bak 3 (2010)


Ong Bak 3 (2010)

The original 2005 "Ong Bak" film was a breath of fresh air in the martial arts genre. We were all stunned by Tony Jaa, an amazing Thai fighter with incredible out-of-this-world martial arts skills and techniques. Some even crowned him the new Jet Li. Although, I'm not convinced he's as good as Jet, Jaa definitely provides spectacular action entertainment. "Ong Bak"'s sequel came out three years after the first movie, and it offered a fairly decent story and sheer kinetic action, that made it watchable. Unfortunatly, the latest Ong Bak installment fails to deliver on almost every level. It suffers from confusing narrative, scattered pacing, beyond horrible editing, lack of action, and silly overly-simplistic dialogues. This time, Tony Jaa himeslef stands behind the camera, and he does a terrible job as a director - his lack of experience is 'written' all over the screen - unimpressive camera shots, quick-causing-headache-cuts and annoying flashbacks - all this make "Ong Bak 3" not very pleasant experience to watch. Even with the help of his mentor, Panna Pittikrai, Jaa's direction falls flat. The story is completely unexcistent, therefore analyizing it is unnecessary. 2/3-rds of this movie revolves around Tony Jaa's recovering from injuries and wounds caused from the villains. And it's as boring as it sounds. There are one or two fight sequnces during Jaa's long recovery, but they mostly lack energy and fail to make an impression. The third part of the film delivers a little bit more action, but it's unspectacular and dull, and certainly not enough to save this film from being awful. The only good thing about "Ong Bak" is the gorgeous Thai scenery and film's cool art direction. Overall, I didn't expected a lot from "Ong Bak 3", but at least I was hoping it to be on par with the second movie. Unfortunately, it wasn't. It ended up as one of the most poorly-crafted and uninspired martial arts flick I've ever seen, and I've seen many. A major disappointment!

  • My Rating: 3.50/10
  • Rotten Tomatoes: N/A
  • IMDb: 5.2/10

4 comments:

Jaccstev said...

Yep I'm agree, the actual problem with "Ong Bak 3" is Jaa himself. Trying to achieve something that one already knows he can do without trying to risk and show depth in other more important parts of a film. It goes to a worse level in which he injecting the element of spiritual and myth in the action itself.

George Beremov [Nebular] said...

Well-said, Jaccsy! It was a terrible mess! Plus, the spiritual element was pretty ridiculous.

Ricky said...

I'm thinking this might be so bad it's kinda good. No?

George Beremov [Nebular] said...

No, Ricky... unfortunately, the case with "Ong Bak 3" is: it's so bad, it's bad :)