Yea! A New Movie Review No One Will Read!
So um… I saw this movie today called The Protector. And well…
The Protector is the story of a man who gets tangled up in an international conspiracy, while investigating the (and I’m not sure if I can even call it this) kidnapping of his elephants. One of which actually gets thrown by a human being, but I mean it was a baby, it only weighed a ton. Right? But they were sacred elephants. Very, very sacred. Which is why it was important to go all the way to Australia and fight an entire mob to get them back. Oh, also his father was killed by the mob. Yeah, that’s important too. Oh! Hey! Guess what? I almost forgot, the mob owns the entire police department of Sydney. Wow! And the funny thing is the mob stole the damn elephants in the first place because they wanted their power, because like I said the elephants were sacred. The brains behind the whole operation is Lady Rose, yes a woman, who poisons her own nephews, one 8, one 13, so they like, can totally not, take over the company from her dead uncle.
Anywho…
Our hero this time is Cam played by Tony Jaa. Jaa, whose real name is Panom Yeerum, is actually quite a martial-artist. One might say a virtuoso. He is a practioner of Mauy Thai, a Thai (go figure) style of martial art, and actually incorporated the movement of elephants into this style of fighting for the movie. Which explains all the stomping and stuff. TJ’s first big breakthrough was in Ong-Bak, and he is set to direct and star in its sequel Ong-Bak 2. In fact he turned down a role in Bret Ratner’s… get some… Rush Hour 3 in order to do so. Funny note: I was fooled, in fact we all were, by the Jackie Chan look-a-like that makes a cameo in the movie. TJ gets comparisons to Jackie Chan because he does all his own stunts, so yeah. But you cannot deny his talent. It’s sort of a shame that he turned Bret Ratner down because all this kid needs is a proper choreographer to set him free. Speaking of kids, Thai cutie Bongkoj Khongmalai is Pla in this. According the info I got on IMDB about her she was born on April 15th 1985, which makes her a year older than me and both of us Aries! Now I totally have an icebreaker! Yes!
So the movie plays exactly like a 16-bit friend of mine named Streets of Rage. Streets of Rage with elephants. It’s got all the characters of the game: there’s a woman with a whip, the skater guys, the one guys that look kinda like girls but really aren’t that trip you, the huge twin wrestler guys – but from both levels cuz there’s actually like 4 of them, the really small guy with a cane, and the cop that helps you. And you know at the penultimate level of the game when you’re going up the elevator to the penthouse floor, that’s there too, except that it happens to be the coolest fucking part in the whole movie. It’s the money shot, by which I mean most likely the reason Quentin Tarantino thought we should all see this, and the scene in which the movie is most at its video game imitating peak. It actually plays like cut scene in a game: an uncut 4 minute long shot. A movie imitating a game imitating a movie: Cam ascends a giant spiral staircase in. Bad guys are coming out of the fucking woodwork, some are getting thrown over the staircase, some smashed into shit, arms breaking, tendons snapping, Cam’s not breaking a sweat, more guys come, more guys fall, more guys come, more guys fall. It’s every nerd’s payback fantasy realized – unstoppable power.
Unfortunately after this Jaa and director Prachya Pinkaew lose steam, and inventiveness. You remember when I told you about the man throwing an elephant, it happens right after Jaa literally executes the exact same move on not 88, not 100, but 40 guys in a row, snapping each guys arm at least twice with an elephant style stomp and twist.
The worst part of the movie falls entirely on the editing. It felt like there were reels that just went up and missing. Within a single frame Cam is in a house fighting some OGs then flying down a river in a speedboat. The writing was poor as well; from the dialogue to the useless characters that popped up from out of nowhere. The acting wasn’t exactly Oscar-caliber either. But that one scene man, damn if I don’t want to share it with the world. I wonder who I can talk to about that.
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