Every film festival should set some time aside for a pretension-free action movie.
At the 31st Starz Denver Film Festival, the honors go to “Chocolate,” the latest from Prachya Pinkaew, the director responsible for “Ong Bak.”
And no, I haven’t a clue why they named the movie “Chocolate.”
The Thai film follows an autistic woman (played with zest by JeeJa Yanin) who’s out to protect her ailing mother, a former gang member who left her old boss on very bad terms.
She didn’t need that big toe, did she?
Our heroine seems helpless, but she’s been watching martial arts movies for years and absorbs nearly every move she sees. She starts harassing her mother’s old colleagues, all of whom owe mama a few bucks, in order to raise money for their medical bills.
That’s merely a pretense for some inspired set sequences which will leave audiences cringing in their seats. The stunts look that painful – and that real.
Young Yanin is a wonder to behold, a quicksilver fighter with a ferocity that’s hard to imagine coming from such a lithe frame.
Like most martial arts epics, the action eventually grinds us down. But every time the fisticuffs threaten to become rote, Yanin pulls off a jaw dropping move or feint and we’re drawn right back in.
Imagine Jackie Chan in his prime and you get a hint of what Yanin can do.
“Chocolate” reconfigures the martial arts formula with its special needs hero, but it’s ultimately just another genre picture, albeit a darned entertaining one.
And don’t even think about leaving the theater until the end credits have rolled. You’ve been warned.
(Photo: An autistic girl battles a gaggle of foes in the Thai martial arts flick “Chocolate.”)
Related posts:
on 
on 
