Director: Prachya Pinkaew.
Starring: Tony Jaa, RZA, Petchtai Wongkamlao, Jeeja Yanin, Marrese Crump, Rhatha Phongam.
Running Time: 104 minutes
Certificate: 15
Returning to the role of Kham, Tony Jaa once again finds himself having to save his elephant. The fact that this second WARRIOR KING film relies on the same story, which although ridiculously cute is still ridiculous, certainly means that the film absolutely has to make up for it with exciting action sequences, it does this to a degree, but there’s a reason that WARRIOR KING 2 is mostly hated by fans.
Tony Jaa arrived on the scene with ONG-BAK, a film that prided itself on a complete lack of CG, green screen, and false wire work. Jaa’s career blossomed in a time where we began to become jaded by such gimmicks, and so at a time of THE EXPENDABLES 3 and superhero features it would be great to return to such displays of acrobatic and martial arts complexities. WARRIOR KING 2 is unfortunately a daft, CG filled action film that looks less and less realistic the longer it goes on for.
Clearly released in 3D in some parts of the world, we are constantly having items and people thrown at us in slow motion with textureless graphics. The fakeness shines through, and although using our imagination is always encouraged in film, Jaa has forced us to expect realism and genuine stunts. The whole end credits show a plethora of green screens and some sequences are just embarrassing. In one section a room is on fire and the fire looks as realistic as a PS1 cut-scene.
This isn’t to say that a lot of the work isn’t still impressive. Sequences are genuinely exciting, until an obvious effect crashes through like a wrecking ball, and Jaa and CHOCOLATE’s JeeJa Yanin give us some exceptional fight scenes. By the end though it gets stupid, with RZA getting more screen time and trying to convince us he is at the level of Jaa. Any character with English dialogue either sounds as though they’ve never heard humans speak before, it’s dry, emotionless, and with moments of strange emphasis. The end had me laughing more than feeling thrilled. Fingers crossed this was a one off experiment to try and merge Jaa with special effects, and hopefully those behind it will realise this is not the way to go.
[usr=2]WARRIOR KING 2 is out on DVD now.
