The Protector Review
Well, it’s been a while since my last review, so clearly I’ve been a bit remiss in keeping up with this whole shtick. To make up for this, I bring you Tom-Yum-Goong, known to us Western fellows as The Protector (not to be confused with the 1985 Jackie Chan movie of the same name).
In 2003 a movie called Ong Bak came out, starring the then unheard of Tony Jaa. Like a lot of eastern films, it was basically a showcase for the actor’s martial arts abilities. What made this special was that Tony Jaa specialises in Muay Boran, an older form of the Muay Thai that had started to become popular in kickboxing circles. Of course, it also helped that Jaa is actually insanely good at what he does, which is hurting people very quickly and bouncing round scenery like a psychotic rabbit. Ong Bak was a success, and would go on to spawn 2 prequels (neither of which I’m going to cover-they’re sadly boring and kinda samey).
2005 gave us Jaa’s next effort, The Protector. Now, Ong Bak was notable for barely restrained violence and a plot that was just a vehicle for the next head kicking scene. The Protector threw any pretence of restraint out the window at the 20 minute mark and knee dropped it from the third story, putting that concept in its place for good.
The movie opens in the forest, with a child Kham (Jaa) being taught about raising elephants by his father. The family raise elephants for the Thai Royal Guard, and it is the dream of Khams father to one day present Por Yai (the adult elephant) to the King. After a scene that serves only to establish some two scene poachers killing Por Yai’s mate and trying to kidnap the calf (Korn), Kham and his father take the elephants to a village to see if they’re good enough for the King. Of course, it’s a trap. The father (who still hasn’t earned a name apparently) gets shot, and both elephants are taken.
Now the insanity begins, and it begins with the first of Khams two investigative techniques. The Oracle Ceremony to find Por Yai! Some people dance around a bit doing obviously ritual type stuff, and then we cut to some guys in suits having a party at an expensive villa owned by the poacher from earlier. Bad karaoke is interrupted by a guard flying into a wall from off screen. People look worried, bottles are grabbed, and then…
FLYING KNEE TO THE FACE! From a long bloody way offscreen! And it’s on! Kham proceeds to kick the crap out of everyone in the room before fleeing with the head poacher’s son. Oh, and learning that the elephants are in Sydney with a guy named Johnny. Into some riverboats we fly, several of which crash before Kham manages to use his boat as a ramp to send the remaining boat into a helicopter which turned up for fun.
Cut to Sydney airport. A brief cameo from a Jackie Chan impersonator (who is actually one of Chan’s stunt doubles oddly enough) that goes nowhere is followed by Kham getting into a taxi driven by a criminal. A chase ensues, in which the driver is shot by a smooth man in a suit. This means he’s probably horrendously evil. Oh, and we’re introduced to Sgt Mark and Inspector Rick, but all you need to know is they’re incompetent. Really, they don’t do much more than act as plot vehicles to link the fight scenes together. Sort of. They take Kham into custody, because apparently being a hostage means you get arrested. This is Sydney though, so maybe that’s accurate?
Anyway, in a stroke of pure dumb luck, they drive past a restaurant (The titular Tom Yum Goong), which is run by Johnny. And look who's outside! Luck! Strangely, the cops don’t let Kham out, so he crashes them into a pole by grabbing the wheel and taking off after Johnny. Johnny kicks him a couple of times and runs away, leaving Kham to follow him to a warehouse where a drug deal is going down. Johnny calls in his boys, who seem to be made up of roller skaters, BMX bike riders and a dude on a quad bike. They all get smashed in a fairly awesome scene of ludicrous moves and stunts, and we move on.
Kham leaves, only to fall asleep in an alley. A passing Thai girl takes pity on him (she works at the restaurant incidentally) and takes him home to patch him up. As Kham sleeps, he dreams of the old Jaturangkabart defending their elephants and generally messing people up. This scene is done in a cheaper version of the opening to Hellboy 2, and despite the limitations, it’s actually awesome to watch. Also painful-dudes made of stone going for the limb breaks just sound like they’re coming for the viewer next.
Back to our idiot cops. Turns out losing prisoners from your own car doesn’t sit well, so they get assigned to guard duty for some politicians getting it on with Thai hookers in a mud spa. You know, bodyguards have it rough. They get slaughtered in droves, are the scapegoats for everything, and to top it off, they get to sit at the door while their fat, wobbly boss gets it on with young attractive women whenever they want. That’s gotta suck. Oh, and restaurant girl (Pla) is also here as one of the hookers. COINCIDENCE!
Cutting this short, fat old white dude starts having a heart attack and asks for his medicine instead of, say, an ambulance. Pla runs off to get it as a local hood walks in and kills everyone else. Cops and guards burst in, followed by Smarmy Cop (Vincent) from before. Vincent shoots both the thug and Rick, intending to pin it on Mark and present it as a dispute in the Thai community. Mark escapes, somehow. Seriously, I’m a bit confused on this one. He escapes multiple armed men by running through them (the fuck?), then grabs one of those motorised walker things and tears off at slightly more than walking pace. Of course, he’s captured about 5 minutes later in a separate scene, making this escape utterly pointless.
Pla meanwhile has video of the murder. She goes to the police station, only to see Vincent emerging. Oddly, seeing a murderer walk out of a police station and ordering cops around doesn’t give her the confidence she needs to deal with the police, so Kham helps her hide instead. She tells him about the restaurant and its’ exclusive back section. Kham heads off to investigate, using all the powers of stealth and trickery at his disposal to remain undetected. Pfft, yeah right. He walks in the front door of the public section screaming “Where’s my elephant!” and punches the first guy he sees before charging out back.
Cue a massive fight scene as Kham fights his way up several stories of building. I really like this scene, mostly because it’s all done from one camera shot that follows Kham on his rampage. It’s really well done, and at the time I saw this it was something I hadn’t seen before. Now, Tony Jaa’s films do actually have really good fight choreography and camera work, but even so, this scene is a standout.
Kham makes his way to the top restaurant, where people are eating all manner of weird shit. Armadillos, live scorpions…yeah, it’s basically a place for rich people to eat endangered animals. Oddly enough, Kham goes a little bit mental, smashing Johnny and his thugs down. He makes his way to the storage room, where he finds lots of live animals of all kinds awaiting slaughter. Chefs try to stop him, but Kham has really gone berserk now and he just smashes them aside without even noticing. He does, however, find Korn by accident. Oh, and Sgt Mark tied up in a room of drug addled hookers.
I just want to take a brief diversion here. In Ong Bak, amidst the craziness we got a few scenes of a drug dealer keeping his women addicted by force feeding them drugs, and nearly killing a character’s sister by shoving a handful of what appeared to be cocaine powder down her throat. In this movie, we have Thai girls getting hooked on drugs, being forced to work off travel debts as hookers and being kept in a dim room, with nearly 20 of them packed into the one room. They’re quite full on scenes of underworld brutality, and I’m not sure what to make of them. On the one hand, it’s probably an accurate look at people stuck in that life. On the other, they’re kinda out of place in movies which really only serve as vehicles for bad guys getting their heads kicked in.
Anyway, on with the show. The police raid the restaurant and free the girls, arrest a few people. Johnny gets roundly castigated for his failure by Rose, the head of the local Thai crime syndicate. Now, we’ve had a few scenes establishing her as ruthless, killing family members to gain control of the syndicate, and as a transsexual. It could be interesting in another movie, but the above is basically pointless-she’s the bad guy, and whilst the movie does introduce her well enough, she’s never developed beyond the caricature of “bitchy evil”. Plus, the transsexual part seems to have just been tacked on for fun, as nothing is ever actually made of it other than a reason for her father to hate her. It turns out Vincent is her lover, and they move on while planning to take out Kham.
Mark and Kham hide in a Buddhist monastery, but decide to leave in the hope of not bringing down trouble. That works as well as you’d expect, and we get one of the most awesome fight scenes I’ve seen committed to camera. Kham takes on 3 fighters one after the other in traditional mid level boss style. The first is a capoeira fighter (played by Lateef Crowder for anyone who recognises the name) and is basically pure awesome. It’s an awesome one on one fight between two guys who both know how to fight, and more importantly, how to choreograph it for film. This and the one camera scene from earlier almost carry the movie on their own.
Fight 2 is with some wushu using kid who seriously looks like he’s going to cry half the time. It’s still decent, but nowhere near as fun as the first. The 3rd gives us the end boss however-a 6ft monster of a wrestler who just runs around like a maniac trying to body slam Kham. The sound of sirens interrupts the fight, and the two flee. Kham retrieves Korn, who was hidden in someone’s backyard. Shit, someone gave the elephant Obfuscate. That’s worrying. Especially given the previous fight-are we sure Korn isn't an obfuscated wrestler following Kham around?
Now, everything kinda comes together at once. Pla gets the video to the cops, Rose is hosting some kind of conference in her skyscraper, Mark is exonerated, and Kham goes for the final showdown. Taking his badly CGI’d elephant calf across Sydney Harbour Bridge in broad daylight. I can see why you’d want to do this if you could, but it just looks dumb and stupid. Also, why is no one questioning an elephant wandering around town? Do elephants regularly wander round Sydney causing trouble or something? Or is everyone simply seeing a wrestler? Because my obfuscate theory is starting to gain momentum...
It all comes together at the tower. Kham bursts in on an international news conference shouting “Where’s my elephant!” before proceeding to smash the people nearest to him. Everyone flees, with no one brave enough to point at the elephant next to him in response to his shouted question. Mark confronts Vincent, who gets shot by Johnny, who fucks off. Wow, that wrapped up quick. Of course, we’re here to see Kham kicking arse, so get on with it!
Kham and Korn make their way to the top level, where they are confronted by a corseted, whip wielding Rose, and the skeleton of Por Yai. Turns out Rose just wanted an adult elephant skeleton to be a symbol of her power. Kham takes this well, crying in front of a horde of minions until one of them stabs him. Giving the poor bastard one of the better “You’re so very fucked” stares I’ve seen recently, Kham proceeds to demolish something like 50 dudes. It’s yet more pure awesome, and utterly painful to watch as what I believe to be the most limb breaks attempted in a single scene unfolds. Kham just smashes the poor mooks aside, and is confronted with the wrestler from before. And his two giant buddies. Oh poop.
They start smashing the crap out of Kham, with one of them throwing him into Por Yai’s skeleton. Oh, and another throws Korn through a goddamned window! Fortunately it’s an internal window, so we don’t have a 50 story drop for our intrepid elephant. But still, they threw an elephant through a window! Total awesome! And also, sadly, confirms that Korn is not a double agent of some kind. Kham has a vision of the old Jaturangkabart explaining how you take down an elephant-cut its tendons. I think that’s about to be immediately and painfully relevant. Kham ties two of Por Yai’s bones to his forearms, and proceeds to slice the absolute fuck out of the wrestlers. Seriously, I think he crippled them for life-he didn’t stop at hamstrings. He went for the Achilles tendon, elbows, shoulders, necks, everything.
He chases Rose to the roof, and smashes her through the skylight and back down into the room from before. She dies (I think); he lands on Por Yai’s tusks, mimicking a shot form earlier where Por Yai carried him round as a kid. It’s…actually kinda cool. Sure it’s cheesy, but it fits for this movie. Close on the cops saying only that they’re not going to comment on a “Thai man in a red scarf” who keeps beating people up in public.
So that’s The Protector. It’s stupid, but gloriously so. The acting is standard C grade shite, the characters are 1 dimensional caricatures rather than developed characters, and the plot barely makes sense, existing only as a link between fights. Hell, Khams major ability seems to be wandering into trouble at exactly the right location to find what he needs in between scenes that jump around almost at random. But really, we’re here for the fighting. And this movie delivers. Tony Jaa is brilliant at what he does, and his camera people are just as good at making sure it looks good on screen. The cinematography is actually above what you’d expect from a martial arts film, which helps. All in all, The Protector is fantastic, cheesy fun and you should all see it, just to marvel at the insanity.