In this action import from Thailand, a Thai country bumpkin with formidable fighting skills and a silly pink scarf tears his way through Australia. Tony Jaa, star of last year's Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior (which I haven't seen), plays Kham, a young man whose father teaches him the ancient art of protecting elephants (I was a few minutes late to the screening, so I didn't catch exactly what the deal with that was). When Thai-Australian gangsters kill Kham's father and abscond with his elephants, he heads for Sydney to rescue the elephants and get his revenge.

Like many action movies, the plot isn't worth recounting, but the Weinstein brothers made it impossible when they trimmed the film from its original 109 minutes to the 80 minutes we see in American theaters, as well as dubbing some, but not all, of the dialogue in English. There's some business about a rebellious Thai-born Sydney policeman (Petchtai Wongkamlao) who starts out as Jaa's adversary but ends up his friend (another protector, this one protecting against institutional corruption), a love interest of sorts, a Chinese-born female crimelord (Xing Jing) given to poisoning people, and lots of black-clad bad guys. I'm sure the longer version links episodes better and explains why people do the things they do.

I'm not sure it would make the film better, of course: we don't go to martial arts films for plot, we go to them for martial arts, and The Protector provides plenty. It's set up a lot like a video game; you can tell what level Jaa has reached by the difficulty of his opponent, and one entertaining sequence has him fighting his way up an enormous spiral staircase (in a single take!), with baddies to dispatch on each landing (shades of Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon, probably not by accident). Muy Thai is a martial art that uses feet, fists, elbows, knees and shins to strike opponents. Jaa's version is incredibly acrobatic, incorporating flips, tumbling, and throws, as well as any available surface (horizontal or vertical) and any available prop (mobile or immobile) in a dizzying delivery that amazingly uses no wires. The early fight scenes, especially a ridiculously entertaining one in which dozens of X-Games rejects attack Jaa on their rollerblades and BMX bikes, are of the Jackie Chan school: they're more than a little goofy, and they're intended to show off both the protagonist's fighting skills and his quick-thinking ability to incorporate the entire set and all of its decorations into his routine. "Routine" isn't a mistake here: it's like watching a particularly skilled dancer at work. It's clear that Jaa wants us to identify him with Chan, too: Chan has a cameo where he bumps into Jaa and they face off, with Chan backing down first.

However, if these early fights, as goofy and inventive as they are, build up our goodwill toward Jaa, the limb-breaking, tendon-severing finale dispels it. This is a personal preference, of course, but I don't tend to like martial arts films where the purpose of the fighting is to maim or kill. The final 15-minute fight scene had me cringing in my seat as the sound effects technicians earned their salary and Jaa twisted and splintered his way through the arms and legs of dozens of black-clad gang members. If Jaa and company intended for the whole film to be taken as seriously as this third-act butchery, they screwed up, because there's nothing to warn us that it's coming. Conversely, if they intended for us to be shocked, they succeeded, but not in a way that makes me want to recommend this film to anyone. Tony Jaa is a phenomenal athlete and a so-so screen presence (he has to develop more than two facial expressions if he wants to avoid becoming the next Jet Li), but I'm not sure the kind of action movie he's selling is ever going to be sought after in the U.S.

—September 11, 2006