Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior

Ong-Bak is a Thai action film from 2003 directed by Prachya Pinkaew. It premiered in Thailand on 21 January 2003 and in North America on 11 February 2005. The lead role is played by Tony Jaa, who has trained Muay Thai since childhood. A young villager from northeastern Thailand, an apprentice of a Buddhist monk and a skilled Muay Thai fighter, travels to Bangkok to recover the stolen head of a Buddha statue from his village. Jaa wanted the film to bring Muay Thai to a wider audience. The film introduced international audiences to Muay Boran, an old style of Thai fighting in which attacks are made with fists, feet, shins, elbows and knees. The fights are shot as contact fights, without computer tricks and without wires. Combat sports analyst Jack Slack called Ong-Bak "perhaps the best martial arts film of this generation". It was followed by a prequel from December 2008, which Jaa directed and also stars in, and after it by another sequel.

Martial arts in this work

Origin

Tony Jaa and Panna Rittikrai had difficulty raising money while preparing the film. They shot the first demo reel on expired film stock. The film contains an English inscription "Hi, Luc Besson, we are waiting for you"; the international distribution rights were later acquired by Besson's company EuropaCorp. Its version cut most of the subplot around the sister of the character Muay Lek and shortened the final fight, and the British release also got an orchestral score by Richard Wells. The original Thai version runs 105 minutes.

Fight choreography

The fight scenes of the film were directed by Panna Rittikrai, who had spent many years making B-movie action films and was Jaa's mentor. The choreography rests on contact fights: it uses no computer tricks and no hanging of actors on wires, which is typical of the style known as wire-fu, and this is cited as a feature of the film. Tony Jaa, who has trained Muay Thai since childhood, shows elements of Muay Boran in the fights. We have not been able to document details of the length of preparation, injuries or individual stunt scenes in the sources.

People and martial arts

• Prachya PinkaewDirector
• Panna RittikraiFight choreographer
• Tony JaaActor· Muay Thai (real practitioner)

Series