Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior

Has anyone seen previews for this yet? I just saw them this morning. I haven’t seen a good martial arts film come out in a loooooooong time. Anybody know if this Tony Jaa guy is any good?

It’s an amazing movie. But don’t confuse it with Muay Thai, the Thai boxing art. Especially when he picks up tonfa and starts using them like it’s nobody’s business.

“It’s an amazing movie. But don’t confuse it with Muay Thai, the Thai boxing art. Especially when he picks up tonfa and starts using them like it’s nobody’s business.”

Yeah I see they changed the name from the original (French) version, Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior, to just Thai Warrior for the U.S. Must have been some grumblings about that :slight_smile:

Anyway, from the limited footage I saw, it looks pretty badass.

What martial arts style is that in the movie? I noticed it looked something like muay thai (ie a lot of elbows and knees and roundhouse kicks) but was definitely not muay thai (ie: he uses the teep as an offensive not a defensive measure, the stance is quite odd, and he leaves himself open a lot more).

I thought it was a lot of fun.

I’m definitely eager to see this movie, but I don’t know when it’ll be coming out over here (ireland). I’ve seen the trailers for the movie and it looks pretty bad ass. Cap’n, I noticed the same thing about the similarity to muy thai but with some major differences. Apparently, the martial art that he displays in that movie is muay boran, an older form of muay thai(mt was distilled from muay boran). Jaa himself trained in a variety of martial arts. Muay boran is supposed to have a wider variety of moves than muay thai, incuding throws and certain strikes that can seriously hurt an opponent. These were probably taken away when muay thai became a ring sport and a way for the fighters to earn a living. It would be definitely cool to learn more about it.

I saw this movie when it came out and its fuckin awesome. There was a whole lot of awesome shit in there and I loved every minute. I actually learned a thing or two also. But dont misunderstand that his fighting may have been coreographed but in no way unrealistic. He really can jump over an average humans head, kick twice his height and move over 3x his weight. I also read he trains by jumping from elephants backs unto eachother. His form really was pure Muay Thai as well, even in the beginning when he performed the kata repping all the animals positions for blocks and attacks. I actually think this guy (Tony Jaa) would have been a worthy fight of Bruce Lee back in the day. Yea, in the movie he picks up some tonfas and destroys people with them, and despite popular opinion I learned tonfas in my Kickboxing academy. He does a whole other lot of acrobatic shit that id love to learn to use effectivley in a fight.