Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Spirited Killer

When a movie tries to combine too many elements together what you end up with is a mess that is hard to watch and understand. That's what's happened here, for intents and purposes this would be called a martial arts film, but its also a horror action thriller, with some comedy added in and then to top off the whole thing there's a musical number that's sung by one of the female characters. Tony Jaa is the only name that most people would recognize in this movie and it's just as well, this is one of those films that all of the actors would like to forget that they ever did.
After a local voodoo priest is killed a mysterious man appears near a village and begins a reign of terror in the surrounding area. The one element that could have saved this movie from all the bad acting and all the worse comedy would have been the fight sequences, but those were bad as well. Since we all know that the stunt coordinators go through a lot of work to get these sequences to look right in front of the camera, its hard sometimes to get them to look unrehearsed. Here they look so staged that it only drags down a story that was already headed for the bottom of the barrel.
Since I'm a fan of Jaa's, when I heard of this film I tossed it onto my rental list so I could see some of his earlier work, but this film doesn't do him justice. If you want to see Jaa at his best checkout The Protector or Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior, both films are far superior to this one. This film is a great example of trying to hard to make a movie when you don't have anything to start with, and your making things up as you go along. This is a poor offering with a star that has such a bright future.

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