The Protector

September 7, 2006 2:19 PM
by [email]

You were raised in the jungle to worship elephants as quasi-spiritual beings – they are like family. Then, mob connected poachers come along, kill the mother elephant and kidnap the father and baby. Oh yeah, they also shoot and kill your father. Think you’d be pissed? Well, Tony Jaa is.

What happens? Well, unlike you, Muay Thai specialist Tony Jaa is like Bruce Lee on crack and makes Jackie Chan look slow. So he breaks some bones – rather a lot of bones actually – on a quest to find his elephants.

That is the basic plot of The Protector. Sure, there is some sort of back-drop story involving mobsters, police corruption, assassination, power derived from spiritual elephants and other hokey nonsense, but none of it is developed, let alone makes any sense. Seriously, I’ve seen more seamless editing and character development in The Jedi Hunter an absurd fan parody of Star Wars and the Crocodile Hunter (RIP Steve).

For example, after the elephants are captured (five minutes into the movie), we briefly see Tony tromping in the woods. The scene then cuts to the “bad guys” enjoying women and drink. Suddenly, someone goes flying through the air and crashes into a mirror. Huh?!? Oh, Tony has arrived to kick some ass.

How did he get out of the jungle and into the city, let alone find the bad guys? Who the hell knows? The Protector just moves from fight scene to fight scene without worrying about establishing anything. Even within the fight scenes things sometimes randomly jump around with no apparent rhyme or reason.

The fights are, occasionally, spectacular. But they are also sometimes repetitive (i.e., lots of limb breaking) and overall are probably less memorable than Ong Bak, the low budget flick that launched Tony Jaa. The Protector had a much higher budget which can be seen in vehicle use, explosions and building destruction. But, does anyone go to a Tony Jaa movie in order to see a speed boat torpedo a helicopter like a low budget James Bond flick? Of course not.

You go see a Tony Jaa movie to see him do things which seem impossible, while knowing that he actually did them. Jaa uses no wires, no CGI and no stunt doubles. His athleticism is astonishing. I have not scene moves like this since Jackie Chan was young enough to Rumble in the Bronx, except everything is at least an order of magnitude more explosive and aggressive than anything Chan ever did.

So it was somewhat disappointing that despite the higher budget there were no more, and perhaps less, jaw dropping scenes than in Ong Bak. Also, the plot gets in the way a lot more than it should.

The basic plot premise is fine – revenge for death of father and elephant and retrieval of other sacred elephants. Indeed, the tragic elephant scenes are reminiscent of Dumbo and Gorillas in the Mist, so you really hate the bad guys about three minutes into the movie – which is good since Tony goes all Rambo on them. Seriously, think about how much better Gorillas in the Mist would have been if Sigourney Weaver had known Muay Thai fighting. Ok, maybe not.

Anyway, while the basic idea is fine, the editing is so awful you have to wonder why they bothered. Tony Jaa’s character has no depth. Zero. Zilch. The original Terminator had more personality.

The complicated mob/conspiracy/police corruption backdrop serves no purpose, since Tony does not care about it in the beginning, middle or end of the movie. He just wants his elephants back. That’s the plot, everything else just gets in the way and reminds you that the filmmakers really don’t know how to do anything other than film Tony beat the crap out of people.

This is a very violent movie. You could take a fifteen year old to Rumble in the Bronx, but I would not recommend it here. No reluctant warrior defending himself like in most fighting movies. Jaa does not stop to ask questions. If you get in his way, he breaks your arm, or your leg, or maybe your ankle or wrist.

And there are a lot of broken bones. In one scene Jaa literally breaks at least one arm or leg on at least two dozen guys. They must have been going for the Guinness record.

On the plus side, there are many great unintentional comedy scenes – how often do you get to laugh at someone viciously getting their wrist broken? That’s worth something.

Bottom line, if you like martial art movies, go see The Protector. If you don’t, don’t.

This is disappointing conclusion, because Tony has enough likeability, charm and acting ability to, combined with his amazing skills, be a cross-over star. But for that to happen, you need to have some semblance of character development and basic scene blocking, which the Protector lacks.

Hopefully, a director/producer with talent get a hold of Jaa so he does not come to such roles after his prime, like Jackie Chan and Jet Li did.