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Zen (JeeJa Yanin), the tough young martial artist in Chocolate |
Chocolate stunts are breathtaking, but don’t milk it
CHOCOLATE - Directed by Prachya Pinkaew
Certificate 18
THERE is something special about seeing actors do scary stunts instead of relying on CGI or lots of ropes.
With films such as The Matrix, the comic book violence was dreary as hell. Then in recent Chinese films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon the mythical taste of martial arts was been diluted by the fact that no kung fu expert, no matter how completely cool they are, can run up trees and fly through the forest canopy.
So Chocolate wins plaudits immediately for some very long and very complicated martial arts dust-ups, with the added interest that the stunts are performed by a mere slip of a girl. If crazy stunts are your thing, then this is breathtaking.
It harks back to the golden age of Chinese films, when Jackie Chan was a star in the massive Asian film market and had yet to be taken over to Hollywood to play comic Orientals, – he filled my teenage years with thrilling stunts.
And what was so incredible to my uninitiated eye was the stages upon which he plugged his craft. Each city had a building site with bamboo scaffolding for him to scurry around on, whopping baddies with well-placed kicks. Each shopping street had awnings galore for him to leap through. Weapons he used in defeating nasty gangsters ranged from bicycles to sacks of chilli. The choreography was superb, and the fact this was done by the man himself added to the sense of fun – outtakes at the end of the film showing poor Jackie making agonising mistakes, reminds you that what you’ve just watched is the real deal.
Chocolate goes for the same as brilliant locations give the martial artists scope to leap and jump and fight and hang off things and duck under stuff and then leap and jump some more.
Much of this, of course, has been seen before, but moments are thrilling, while other parts make you wish for a little less action, a little more conversation, as, essentially, watching people hit each other over and over and over again is not nice and eventually becomes rather tedious.
We meet Zen (JeeJa Yanin), a young autistic girl whose mother Sin (Som Amara Siripong) has got herself mixed up with some rather tasty Thai gangsters.
Sin is the girlfriend of baddie boss Number Eight (Pongpat Wachirabanjong) but attracts his wrath when she falls in love with Japanese gang member Yazuka (Hiroshi Abe).
Masashi shows his displeasure by shooting off his own toe (youch!) and forbidding her ever to see her lover again. But she’s pregnant, and it so transpires her little daughter has a form of autism.
Things get a bit sticky when Masashi discovers Sin is still in contact with the father of her child, and decides she must lose a digit off her left foot (as he has done) to remind her of his wish.
Meanwhile, young Zen begins to show remarkable reflexes and eventually teaches herself to be frankly the toughest little girl in the world by mastering various martial arts. When her mother falls ill – its cancer, we learn – she sets about with the help of fat kid as her sidekick to collect the cash her loan shark of a mother is owed from street traders and the like.
Odd? Certainly. Bizarre? Definitely. Enjoyable? In parts.
Moments stand out, which mainly consist of the little thing kicking two tons out of the baddies.
A scene in a meat market is particularly well shot and has some wincing moments involving flabby baddie flesh and meat hooks. |
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Your comments:
This was one of the best movies I have seen in a long time keep up the great work.
T. TRUMAN |
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