TONY JAA and Ong Bak: The Retro Hollywood Interview

(Tony Jaa, above.)

(As the new decade begins, we will be posting a few notable interviews which haven't appeared on our site yet. This short talk with Tony Jaa appeared originally in Venice Magazine. I had the chance to see Jaa spar in person in a small hotel conference room, which was pretty damn cool. At the time of this interview a few years ago, Tony's English wasn't very strong, so we kept it quick. His action scenes speak for themselves anyway.)

Tony Jaa: Thai Warrior

The Next Action Hero Has Arrived

by Terry Keefe

In a demonstration for us, Thailand native Tony Jaa has just taken out five of his sparring partners with spinning kicks which seem to defy gravity. Then, with pinpoint accuracy, he flies through the air and gives a hard kick to a rubber block that another sparring partners holds above his head. The rubber block hits the ceiling like a bullet. The United States is the most current stop on Jaa's trek towards worldwide fame as the next big martial arts star, on the back of his film Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior, which was originally released back home in Thailand in 2003 and became the country's highest grossing film of the year. Jaa's fighting specialty is known as Muay Thai, or Thai Boxing, and martial arts film aficionados will notice that the style incorporates the most devastating flying knees and elbows ever captured on film. Whenever Jaa goes soaring through the air with his elbow outstretched in Ong Bak, the fight will soon be over, as said elbow crashes down like a thunderbolt onto his hapless opponent's cranium in an explosion of sweat. The impact of these blows is unquestionably augmented by Jaa's refusal to use the wires and special effects now standard in martial arts films. Simply put, much of the fighting in Ong Bak is real for all intents and purposes, and both Jaa and his cast mates have the bruises to prove it. Watching the film is like being in the front row for the greatest series of fights you can imagine, and you can almost feel the sweat and blood smacking you in the face. Jaa has drawn the inevitable comparisons to both Jet Li and Jackie Chan, and the truth is he shares qualities with both, which he mixes into something uniquely his own. Jaa has some of the same acrobotic grace as Li, mixed in with the everyman quality and humor of Chan.

Directed by Prachya Pinkaew, the plot of Ong Bak revolves around the theft of the Ong Bak Buddha statue from the temple in the small town where Ting (played by Jaa) lives. He is sent to Bangkok to retrieve it from the gangsters who are holding it hostage, and along the way he enlists the reluctant help of George (played by Thai comedy star Petchthai Wongkamlao), who also grew up in Ting's village but has since moved to Bangkok to become a hustler of sorts. Together, Jaa and Wongkamlao are at the center of Ong Bak's most memorable scene, a lengthy chase through a Bangkok marketplace, which includes moments where Jaa runs through the streets on the heads of different pedestrians! Another standout scene appears later in the film at an abandoned gas station in which Jaa lights himself on fire to deliver a flaming kick to an opponent. Says Jaa, "It was very difficult, because I had to oil myself down and then wait for the director to say, 'Action.' The first time we did it, there wasn't enough oil. The second time, there was too much oil! The fire came all the way up and I burned my eyelashes and armhair."

Next up for Jaa is Tom Yum Goong, which will reunite him with the crew of Ong Bak, including director Pinkaew. Jaa is quick to point out that his new film isn't a sequel to Ong Bak, but that it is once again an action film, with a significant portion of the plot "revolving around elephants." He won't give away much more than that. But Tony Jaa, Muay Thai battles, and elephants? We're there.