Word: kung-fu
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...doesn't work much anymore. The genre needs another hero, and Jaa (Thai name: Phanom Yeerum) is the fellow to fill the void. He's young--28--and good-looking, with a quiet élan to match his athletic skill. He's also a throwback to kung-fu film's early days, when stars and stunt men alike took a licking and kept on kicking. Ong-Bak has no crouching, no hiding, no wires, no pixel-perfected stunts. Like Chan's early epics, it convinces you that the mayhem is real, that the star is enduring the pain for your...
Like most other martial-arts stars, Jaa has been preparing since childhood. Born to elephant trainers in the hard-luck northeast province of Surin, the boy watched kung-fu movies on outdoor screens during temple festivals. Soon he was aping his heroes and studying gymnastics as well as Muay Thai, an ancient Siamese boxing discipline that is a kind of combination of karate and kickboxing. He worked as a stunt man, doubling Robin Shou in Mortal Kombat, before director Prachya Pinkaew saw a reel of Jaa's best stunts and built Ong-Bak around...
...exclaims, a grin stretching across his bronzed face. "Everybody wanted to be Bruce Lee!" But this was Poland, 1981 - the communist regime had imposed martial law to suppress opposition, and the authorities didn't like the idea of all those teens gathering nightly to chop and kick like the kung-fu movie star. They ended the training sessions "under the pretext of renovating the gym," Korzeniowski says. "Of course they never finished, and athletics was the only session open." Walking was his destiny. In 1984, he qualified for the Polish championships, where he placed last. But competing...
Fought either in an arena or a steel cage, these battles inevitably draw comparisons to World Wrestling Entertainment, as both are staged fights between grown men. But it is the undercurrent of self-parody that gives these fights their hipster gravitas against the Rock et al. When Kung-Fu Chicken Noodle, a giant chicken noodle can with arms, legs and a steak knife, goes up against Los Plantanos, the heroic Spanish banana twins, the pretense of seriousness is thin...
Somehow, though, you knew that the fate of the universe would hang on the outcome of a kung-fu fight between Neo and Smith. It comes at the end on and above city streets in a slow, heavy rain. The trilogy ascends and soars with the two combatants and ends not with a whimper but with a blast of light...