The plot of Ong-Bak is about as simple as you can get, even for a martial arts film.  The welfare of a remote Thai village is protected by the Ong-Bak, an ancient statue of Buddha.  One night, a group of thugs come into the temple and take off the statue’s head, and as a result, a curse descends on the village, Temple Of Doom style.  Ting, an orphan who was raised in the temple, vows to find the head and return with it.  And so, with just the clothes on his back and a handful of cash, this bumpkin sets off for the big city.

Thankfully, however, Ting also happens to be a master of the brutal art of Muay Thai kickboxing.  Which, naturally, is going to come in very handy over the next 90 minutes or so for kicking epic proportions of ass.

When Ting arrives in the city, he hooks up with the estranged son of the village chief, a two-bit hustler whose name just so happens to be (I kid you not) Dirty Balls, and whose schemes (and name) provide much of the film’s comic relief.  Dirty Balls’ partner in crime, a scrappy young girl with one of the shrillest voices in the world, also tags along, having taken a shine to the strong, silent villager.

Over the course of the movie, the trio mixes it up with drug dealers, archaeological thieves, gangsters, illegal boxing matches, and all other manner of underhanded types.  Like I said, the movie’s plot is about as simple and predictable as it gets, serving only to provide a little breathing space between the fight scenes.  Of course, the fight scenes are the real reason why anyone watches martial arts movies (and anyone who tells you otherwise, myself included, is lying through their teeth), but that’s triply so with Ong-Bak.

At this point, I want you to pause and ask yourself how much cinematic ass-kicking you can handle.  Now be honest.  If your only experience comes from Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal movies, or worse yet, Don “The Dragon” Wilson movies, you’re simply not ready for this one.  Trust me.Those movies have the appearance of action, but it’s all fancy editing and camera tricks.  Go rent a few Bruce Lee movies and then come back when you’re ready.  If you’ve made it through early Jackie Chan and Jet Li movies, like Drunken Master 2 and Fist Of Legend, you’re getting closer.  But even then, you’ll need to think long and hard before going into Ong-Bak.

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In 2000, Ryuhei Kitamura released Versus, his third film and the one that put him on the map.  With its mixture of too-cool yakuza swagger, Matrix-style action, Evil Dead homages, samurai action, and oh yeah, plenty of hilarious zombie gore, Versus took the cult film world by storm and announced the emergence of a new talent to watch.  Everyone, myself included, eagerly scanned the Web for any news about Kitamura’s upcoming projects.

Last year, he released Alive, a dark sci-fi film a la Cube that has received a wide range of opinions, though most seem to agree that it’s pretty lacking compared to Versus (I have not seen it myself, but hope too soon).  And so everyone’s attention turned to Azumi, Kitamura’s adaptation of Yu Koyama’s manga series.  Put simply, it ain’t no Versus.  Not even close.

As much as I like it, Versus does have some big flaws that become apparent once the initial adrenaline rush wears off (for starters, too many scenes run on for far too long and it often drowns in its own stylistic excess).  However, the film’s appeal easily outweighs any flaws, and it’s still one that I highly recommend and get a kick out of when I watch it with friends.  Azumi, however, feels like a pale, 5th-generation photocopy of everything that made Versus so great, while taking everything that was flawed about Versus and multiplying it by a factor of 10.

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Anyone who knows me knows that I love samurai movies; the epics of Akira Kurosawa, the tragicomedies of Zatoichi, the swagger of Toshiro Mifune’s Samurai trilogy, the tragedy of Hara-Kiri, the slice n’ dice of Lone Wolf And Cub, etc.  So naturally, I was pretty interested in seeing The Last Samurai, even if I was somewhat put off by the fact that it was both a Hollywood film and a Tom Cruise film.  Well, I just got back from seeing it, and most of my fears were pretty much realized.

First of all, the movie is incredible from a technical standpoint.  Cinematography, costumes, battle sequences (the scene when the samurai first appear, riding out of the misty forest like apparitions, is breathtaking), locations—all of those are magnificent.  Much of the acting is topnotch as well.  However, it should be noted that the finest acting in the movie comes from the Japanese cast, specifically Ken Watanabe who gives a powerful performance as the rebel samurai leader Matsumoto.  And perhaps best of all, it has ninjas (personally, I believe that most movies can be dramatically improved with the presence of a few ninjas).

But the movie’s flaws are pretty numerous, as well, starting with Tom Cruise’s performance.  I don’t hate Cruise, if he’s in the right movie.  But in The Last Samurai, much of his performance seems to consist of “Deep Meaningful Statements” and looks that range from “thoughtful” to “tortured” to “pensive”.  Indeed, much of the movie’s dialog is pretty cheesy and clunky—the movie is bookended by two real groaners.

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Immediately following Gozu, it was time to head over to the Uptown for Purple Butterfly, Lou Ye’s sweeping historical epic of a Chinese resistance movement during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai during WW2. In many ways playing like a slightly muddled Wong Kar-Wai film, Purple Butterfly stars Zhang Ziyi as a young Chinese girl in love with the son of a Japanese official.

She gets drawn into the resistance movement after her lover is called back to Japan and her brother—an anti-Japan activist—is blown up by a Japanese radical in the street in front of their home.  Things are further complicated when Ziyi’s lover returns as second-in-command of the Japanese intelligence service in Shanghai.

Lou Ye aims to create an epic story where the character’s romantic entanglements mirror the political situation and he comes very close to succeeding.  But he’s ultimately undone by an overly convoluted script and an over-reliance on the Ziyi story arc, neglecting the more pivotal and emotionally involving role of Szeto (Liu Ye).  A young man whose fiancé was killed in the crossfire of a Japanese/Resistance gunfight, Szeto is mistaken for a Resistance operative and is subsequently played by both sides.

Apparently, the version we saw was already a re-edit of the version that played at Cannes and the film could stand to be edited further to tighten things up and clarify the basic story arcs.  There are some unnecessary twists and characters that serve only to distract from the central story. That’s too bad, because in terms of both acting and cinematography, Purple Butterfly is a fairly stunning piece of work.

Written by Chris Brown.