Chocolate

This movie is definitely worth reading the subtitles. I got to see it on a trial and needed to buy it for my collection! I have seen it since when other streaming services where they overdub the voices in English, this movie is worth reading the complete original script in subtitle form while listening to it in another language. I usually find it hard to do that but with this movie I love it so much I don't even need to read the subtitles anymore it's like I understand them

Disability in film is generally still a shaky matter that has yet to find consistently skillful representation, but developmental disability in particular is a taboo that seems to only rarely find outlets. Thus, when Jeeja Yanin broke into the Thai movie scene by playing a developmentally-disabled young woman in a martial arts film, the potential for mishandling the premise was high and the likelihood of bad taste even higher. Amazingly, action filmmaker extraordinaire Prachya Pinkaew ( Ong-Bak ) proved himself surprisingly tactful in crafting both a great vehicle for Yanin and a unique, sincere action experience that I have yet to see replicated.The story: When the autistic daughter of a gangster's ex-girlfriend develops an uncanny talent for kickboxing, she collects debts to pay for her mother's medical treatment.From the opening dedication, director Pinkaew makes it clear that his story is a testament to the potential of "all the special children in the world;" it clearly was not a facetious decision that the lead character is autistic. While the 24-year-old Jeeja Yanin was not a child at the time of filming, she is the perfect vessel for the spirit of the story. Her performance is memorable, bereft of the blunt and insensitive exaggerations that a less talented performers may have resorted to when playing a character like this. While the character's savant-level prodigiousness in the martial arts may be without precedent in the real world, the more important aspects of this particular disorder - the behavioral, communicative, and social symptoms of autism - are recreated well and without condescension. I cannot say that viewers who are themselves autistic will be able to relate to or even like the movie - the "supercrip" factor is high, here - but I am certain that Pinkaew & Co. put much effort into molding an action movie around this aspect without betraying the experiences of real people.A common complaint about the movie is its screenplay, and I am split on this matter. Any writer who is able to outline what I wrote about in the previous paragraph deserves credit, but admittedly, the story itself is not very dynamic and offers few surprises or challenges to the viewer. The film is quite dramatic and features some powerful performances - note Ammara Siripong's ( Kill 'Em All ) especially multifaceted role as Yanin's onscreen mother - but I can only imagine how much more memorable they would have been were the plot a bit less simplistic. Characters tend to be either purely good or purely evil - an unequal parallel to something as complicated as autism - and the routine outplay of the plot should leave no one in doubt at the halfway point as to how the movie will end. I was satisfied, but the tale could be told better.The action content is spectacular...to a point. I was blown away by the fight scenes when I first saw the film, but repeated viewings have sobered me a bit to their limitations. Yanin is undoubtedly a talented performer: she has no background in stunts, but it was not without reason that she was quickly labeled the female counterpart of Tony Jaa. However, the comparison is not entirely apt, because the choreography is largely no match for many of Jaa's movies. Almost all of the fights feature Yanin taking on multiple opponents, but the fight direction is largely limited to her delivering standing kicks to her attackers' heads and ribs - nothing else. Jeeja's delivery couples with good editing to provide an adrenalizing first impression, but people who watch a lot of karate flicks will eventually be able to identify the action's shortcomings. Among these is the lack of credible opponents Yanin faces: her showdown against an epileptic capoeira fighter (breakdancer Kittitat Kowahagul) shows some promise, but she overpowers almost everyone else with little trouble. It's a fun demonstration, and Yanin would prove herself capable of carrying out more complicated choreography in the future, but don't expect this one to utterly blow your mind.Jeeja's sparse career since this film has been an uneven adventure. She was thoroughly downgraded when finally appearing alongside Tony Jaa in  The Protector 2 , which was enough to make me fondly remember how promisingly her movie reign began. Yanin still has a ton of potential and this world needs all the female action heroes it can get, but it can also use more unconventional lead roles like the one she had here. For all its shortcomings, the film thoroughly earns these four stars and is worth owning. Check it out!

Tried to find a review that actually was critical of the movie and not just praising it and giving it 5 stars or giving it 1 star for bad dubs.I watched the original language + subtitles... I thought the movie was overall good for an action flick... but there are some key things here that hurt it. Warning, spoilers ahead!1. The special effects work is pretty bad. When she's catching the balls they are clearly bad CGI. There's a scene where the abacus hits her face and her nose bleeds... and the blood is CGI too? It looked like it was floating from her face? Like why would you CGI that? Couldn't you just squirt fake blood up her nose and let it run out? It was an odd choice like they decided to add that later on in post.2. Suffers from the "why not just kill them" problem. The bad dude rolls up as the lead guy is outside with his crew. Shoots all of his crew and goes to shoot lead guy. Lead woman steps in the way, in an act of love. At this point the bad dude just goes "better not see you two together again!" and lets them both go... like why? Why wouldn't he just shoot the guy and call it a day? There seems to be a love triangle type situation happening here, though it's never really explained.If bad dude is so bad, why does he not just kill the lead guy? Why does he then come to the lead woman's house and cut her toe off? Why not kill her there? Like I don't get the point of keeping her alive when he clearly doesn't value human lives and it would save him a lot of aggravation...3. The ending was highly annoying because we get the trope of 50 bad guys all protecting their boss but none of them apparently have guns... or like 3 of them have guns and the rest are unarmed or have swords? The girl proceeds to fight like 30-40 guys and if a single one of them had a gun it would be a very short fight scene. But conveniently nobody has a gun as they all fight hand to hand combat for like 5 straight minutes. Cool action scene but not really very realistic.4. They spend the entire movie painstakingly collecting money for the mother's medical expenses... just to have her freaking die anyway! Lame. The whole movie is pointless! Oh yay she gets to be with her father who she doesn't know at all. What a great ending?5. Circling back to fighting all the bad guys... I have to ask why they keep getting up to fight her after she's beat the living crap out of like a dozen people right in front of them. I don't recall a single person just... running away. They all have to take her on and all have to get knocked out. The fight scene between the girl and the two women is the worst. I'm trying to figure out how these two women (who clearly can fight) keep getting up from being kicked repeatedly in the head. Just to prolong the fight scene, I guess? I mean a kick to the head is a kick to the head. No amount of fight training is going to make your skull more durable to kicks compared to other fully grown men.But I digress, they get kicked repeatedly in the head, and still get up to chase after her and keep fighting. Like... why? What is their incentive? Their boss must be paying them a ton. He's not even watching, they could just run off and leave and he wouldn't even know. Why are all these henchmen literally risking their lives for this weird evil dude? The same goes for all of the people fighting the girl throughout the movie. At some point after seeing her kick about 15 people's faces in, maybe you should just put down your 2x4 and walk away? I get she's a little girl but she's clearly on another level compared to all of these guys so it's weird that not a single one of them is like "f*** this, I'm out" and just runs. Nah, they all have to get beaten for the sake of padding the fight scene.Overall I give it 2 stars just for the fun fighting sequences. You can tell some of those hits really hurt and there was a lot of practical stunt work which was great. I think they dragged on far too long most of the time though, and would have done well to just end after beating a handful of guys and the rest just give up. I was exhausted just watching her kick like 100 times in a single fight.

una bella favola ricca di azione, ottime le scene di arti marziali, convincenti i personaggi e proprio odiosi i cattivi...

Scneario travaillé pour une fois, le personnage principal est mimi et redoutable en baston, de très bonne scenes de baston à la ong bak, violente et bien foutues, bluray au top (image, bonus), attention pas de VF ici, que des sous titres anglais. Mais vraiment un super film pour fan du genre

Ce film reprend quelques scènes de combat de Ong bak puisque l'héroïne est une admiratrice de Ong Bak.Le jeu des acteurs et l'humour est cependant plus intéressant que celui de Ong Bak.Je l'ai vu en version originale sous titré anglais. Aucune difficulté de compréhension vu que l'héroïne ne parle pas beaucoup.Pour ceux qui aiment l'action et les arts martiaux, c'est un film à voir.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001EBO90G/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1great movie, run time for this blu ray is 1 hour and 32 minutes. have not found a version of this movie yet that is 1 hour and 50 minutes. the dvd i had before was 1 hour and 28 minutes. the extra material is good. the same as written except i can't find Power Moves (Easter Eggs), it is either extremely well hidden or not there at all. don't trust run time written on sites or on back of the blu rays and dvds, both this blu ray and my former dvd says 89 minutes on the back. still great version of the movie and good extras so go for it, but if you are looking for the whole movie you will be disappointed.

Unsereiner, der seine Jugend und eigene Kampfsportzeit zu Lebzeiten eines gewissen Bruce Lee verbringen durfte, hat natürlich Erwartungen. Nun, die Trägerin des 3. Dan Teakwondo, die vor ihrer Schauspielerei auch Trainerin war, weiß durchaus zu überzeugen. Aber fangen wir vorne an. Zunächst punktet der Film durch die einfühlsame Bekanntmachung mit der Hauptprotagonistin. Die in der Rückblende aufgezeigte Entwicklung des autistischen Kindes wird weniger durch Dialoge, denn durch bewegende Bilder vollzogen und bleibt damit emotional haften. Ebenso die erwachende Neugier der Jugendlichen, welche - wie viele Autisten - mit besonderen Talenten versehen ist. Ihre ungewöhnliche Wahrnehmungsfähigkeit und schnellen Reflexe bringen sie in der Folge dem Kampfsport näher. Bis hierhin dürfte der Film den ein oder anderen Hauptsache-auf-die-12-Freund langweilen. Doch gerade dieser Teil des Films berührt irgendwie und verleiht selbigen einen gewissen Anspruch. Die Figur Zen gewinnt den Zuschauer auf diese Weise auch zweimal. Als schutzbedürftiges Kind und Außenseiterin zu Beginn und im weiteren Verlauf nochmals als Heldin. Ein Kompliment gilt somit auch dem Drehbuch und der Regie. Die Charaktere (Zen/Freund/Mutter) werden glaubhaft herüber gebracht und verbunden. Anerkennenswert auch ist die schauspielerische Leistung der 26-jährigen. Immerhin ist eine Autistin darzustellen bekanntlich nicht die einfachste Nummer im Mimen-Geschäft. Ungeschlagen bleibt hier natürlich Dustin Hoffman in Rainman - wobei er den Vorteil hatte, sich nicht auch noch erstklassig prügeln zu müssen ;-)Nachdem wir dann wissen wer diese Zen ist, darf Yanin auch ihre Kampftechnik zeigen - und überrascht erneut. Szenen aus Bruce Lee Filmen waren die letzten, die ich mir in Zeitlupe ansehen musste um zu erkennen, was er da gerade gemacht hat - und die Streifen sind immerhin 30 Jahre alt. Nun, bei Fräulein Vismitananda ist dies auch erforderlich, denn die Thai ist gut und schnell - auch wenn ihre Präzision unter der teils übertrieben akrobatischen Choreografie leidet, was in Filmen mit Tony Jaa jedoch ebenfalls der Fall ist. Besonders gefällt die Lässigkeit, mit der die 26-jährige den ein oder anderen schwierigen Angriff ansatzlos zum Kontrahenten führt. Beispielsweise bei ihrem ersten Kampfeinsatz, als sie einem der Gegner mit ihrer Puppe in den Händen normal gegenübersteht und diesem ohne Ansatz und Körperneigung ins Gesicht tritt. Ihr anschließend fragend unschuldiger Blick auf den am Boden liegenden Gegner - ob er sich denn noch rührt - hat eine gewisse Komik und erinnert dann tatsächlich an den legendären chinesischen Superstar. Choreografen und Stunt-Team haben ebenfalls gute Jobs gemacht, weswegen wir auch gerne über das Fehlen der Kampfsport typischen Effektivität und Präzision hinwegschauen.Apropos schauen: Yanin ist auch eine Hübsche und im Abspann kann sich der geneigte Zuschauer dann noch ansehen, was Sie und ihre Filmpartner während der Dreharbeiten so alles einstecken mussten. Kampfsportler wissen, dass es doppelte Konzentration erfordert, den eigenen Schlag/Tritt Zentimerter vor dem Treffmoment abzustoppen.Fazit:Ein Martial Arts Film der sich in meinen Augen aus dem Genre hervorhebt, da er kaum etwas falsch macht. Glaubhafte Charaktere und Handlung, gelungene Umsetzung, gute Hauptdarstellerin mit erstklassiger Kampftechnik. Yanin Vismitananda überzeugt in ihrem Erstauftritt und hat das Potential die größte Schwäche solcher Filme zu eliminieren, namentlich weniger Akrobatik denn mehr sehenswerte Kampftechnik zu präsentieren.Der Film ist eigenständig und damit schwer vergleichbar. Eben ein Mix aus "Todesgrüße aus Shanghai" und "Rainman" ;-))