The martial arts film "Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior" has become mildly famous on the festival circuit because of what it doesn't
have: wires, stuntmen, or computers. There are tricks of camera placement and creative editing, of course, but for the most part, what you see is what you get, and it's often extraordinary. It's a good thing, too, because the story is dumb and the paper-thin characters are motivated only by the needs of the plot. But man, those action scenes! Just watching the film's hero, played by lithe super-human Tony Jaa, run down a city street is thrilling, as he is able to leap over tables, carts and other tall objects as though they were curbs. His fighting skills are even more impressive -- he and the character are trained in Muay Thai -- and the film works as a sort of Muay Thai porno, where there's a basic story and a little dialogue between scenes of everybody gettin' busy. Jaa plays Ting, the favorite son of a humble village called Nong Pradu. The town deity is Ong-Bak, and a festival to honor him is coming soon -- but alas, a greedy fiend named Don (Wannakit Sirioput), angry that he could not strike up all the deals he wanted while visiting Nong Pradu, has sawed off the head of the Ong-Bak Buddha statue and taken it with him back to Bangkok. Without a head for the statue, surely the village is doomed! (I do not pretend to understand this, nor do I know if it accurately reflects how Buddhism is practiced in modern-day rural Thailand. Either way, the townspeople are distraught.)
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