The Protector

2005 [THAI]

Action / Crime / Drama / Thriller

62
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 76% · 89 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 76% · 50K ratings
IMDb Rating 7.0/10 10 40394 40.4K

sydney, australia australia elephant buddhism fighter tempel

Plot summary

A young fighter named Kham must go to Australia to retrieve his stolen elephant. With the help of a Thai-born Australian detective, Kham must take on all comers, including a gang led by an evil woman and her two deadly bodyguards.

Director

Prachya Pinkaew Photo
Prachya Pinkaew

Top cast

Ron Smoorenburg Photo
Ron Smoorenburg as Kham's opponent
Tony Jaa Photo
Tony Jaa as Kham
Erik Markus Schuetz Photo
Erik Markus Schuetz as Johnny's Henchmen
Nathan Jones Photo
Nathan Jones as T.K.
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
946.23 MB
1280*714
Thai 2.0
NR
Subtitles th  
23.976 fps
1 hr 51 min
Seeds 21
1.77 GB
1920*1072
Thai 2.0
NR
Subtitles th  
23.976 fps
1 hr 51 min
Seeds 37

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Merklin 6 / 10

Jaa is amazing !!! The script on the other hand...........

As a coherent , well acted film tom yum goong is a failure.As an opportunity to see tony jaa completely and utterly destroy his opponents in the most awe inspiring and brutal ways possible, its a huge success! The action in tom yum goong is phenomenal to say the least - tony jaa proves that ong bak was no fluke!The part where jaa does battle with a gang of bikers and roller bladers is an exciting sequence , reminiscent of jackie chan in his police story days. The fight where he battles his way to the top floor of a restaurant in one continuous tracking shot, is a truly amazing piece of work that demands to be re-winded more than once .The fight that pits jaa against dozens of suited henchmen is a bone crunching, applause worthy spectacle that proves what ong bak fans already know- TONY JAA IS THE MAN !!!!! These fights are just some of a collection masterful action sequences .As for the rest of the film...lets put it this way- if the action was no good then tom yum goong would be unwatchable. The action makes up for the moronic , near pointless plot . I know that we don't watch these sort of films for plot, but tom yum goong takes the cake with its "one man looking for his elephant" story!And don't get me started on the acting, particularly the lines spoken in English.Tony jaa needs to work with a decent script writer in future....Weak on pretty much everything else except the fights , tom yum goong has Superior action and confirms that tony jaa is an amazing performer.
Reviewed by teh_mode 6 / 10

Where's my elephant!?!

The makers of 2003's Ong-Bak are back with bang, a crash, a couple of elephants and many, many cracks. In fact, every other word spoken appears to be "Argh!". Muay Thay expert-extraordinaire Tony Jaa returns to lead us once again, as his sacred elephants are poached from Thailand and sent to, of all places, Australia. As our hero Kham, he must travel there himself to basically kick the living snot out of anyone who steps in his way. And that's about it.The maker of this film, Prachya Pinkaew, is either a really shoddy storyteller, or has clocked on to the fact that no one goes to see martial arts films for the plot. Warrior King has an almost identical structure to his first film Ong Bak: a good 25 minutes or so of religious Thai imagery, villagers roaming around with animals before someone comes along and messes everything up. Petchtai Wongkamlao essentially reprises the comedy role he played in the previous release, although this time he hogs all the comic moments, as the wafer-thin script offers little in compensation for its action scenes. All the English-spoken acting is terrible. With that said I'm assuming most of the foreign language acting is terrible too, but for obvious reasons the Australian acting stood out more. The script is full of age old Hollywood clichés such as cops being taken off the case, only to go vigilante, gold-hearted prostitutes and a whole host of colourful looking gangsters (former WWE reject Nathan Jones makes a hilarious cameo) that wouldn't look out of place in a straight-to-video Steven Seagal flick.And yet despite the glaring faults with a film as silly as this, none of the criticisms truly matter for one simple reason: Tony Jaa is absolutely amazing. Watching our protagonist fly kick the hell out of everyone before performing all sorts of acrobatic stunts will have your jaw on the floor. The man can obviously smash through thin plot points as fast as he can human bones. The film isn't badly shot either. Apart from getting a nice sense of Thai culture and a splendid view of Sidney, Warrior King is expertly choreographed. There is one remarkable sequence in which our protagonist battles his way through four stories of the same building absolutely smashing the hell out of anything thing that moves, which seems to go on forever, taken all in one single steady-cam shot. It would make David Lean jealous.Granted if you've seen Ong Bak watching Muay Thay for a second time won't have the same head-crushing impact. Whilst Warrior King boasts plenty of superbly choreographed action sequences, it doesn't peak as well as the much more pure Ong Bak managed to. The movie does, however, generate a sense of darkness amidst the stalking threat of campy buffoonery. So it's an impressive sophomore effort, obviously catering more towards an ever increasingly cognizant western audience.
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