Tom-Yum-Goong
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| Tom-Yum-Goong | |
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 The English-language Thai movie poster. |
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| Directed by | Prachya Pinkaew |
| Produced by | Somsak Techaratanaprasert, Prachya Pinkaew, Sukanya Vongsthapat |
| Written by | Prachya Pinkaew, Kongdej Jaturanrasamee, Napalee, Piyaros Thongdee, Joe Wannapin |
| Starring | Tony Jaa, Nathan Jones, Petchtai Wongkamlao, Bongkoj Khongmalai, Xing Jing |
| Cinematography | Nattawut Kittikhun |
| Distributed by | Sahamongkol Film International |
| Release date(s) |  11 August 2005 |
| Running time | 110 minutes |
| Country | Thailand |
| Language | Thai, English |
| Budget | 300 million baht |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Tom-Yum-Goong (Thai: ต้มยำกุ้ง; IPA: [tɑmjɑmkuŋ], distributed as Warrior King in the UK, as The Protector in the US) is a 2005 Thai martial arts film starring Tony Jaa. The movie was directed by Prachya Pinkaew, who also directed Jaa's prior breakout film Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior. As with Ong-Bak, the fights were choreographed by Jaa and his mentor, Panna Rittikrai. In the United States, it is being endorsed by Quentin Tarantino as "Quentin Tarantino Presents The Protector".
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[edit] Plot
Kham is the last of a family line of guards who once watched over the King of Thailand's war elephant. He grows up forming close relations to his elephant, Por Yai and his calf, Khorn. His father hopes that one day Por Yai will be certified as a genuine White elephant and given to the King. During Songkran festival, Kham's father is tricked into bringing Por Yai to a staged inspection for the King's white elephant. The elephants are stolen with help from Mr. Suthep, a local MP who is collaborating with elephant poachers.
Kham raids Mr. Suthep's home, disrupting a party, demanding to be told where his elephants are. Mr. Suthep reluctantly tells Kham that a Vietnamese thug named Johnny has taken them to Sydney, Australia. He shows Kham a photograph of Johnny standing outside Tom Yum Goong Otob, a Thai restaurant there.
Kham makes his way down under. On his way, it is revealed that the local Australian news has reported the theft of the elephants. Sergeant Mark, a Thai-Australian policeman in Sydney is introduced. He is filming with news reporters about Asian communities in downtown Sydney. In the middle of the filming, he is informed by his partner Rick that a Korean minimart is being robbed. Mark enters the store and subdues the robber, a teenager named Tui, and subsequently releases him in a side street much to the surprise of Rick. But it is Sergeant Mark's way of keeping peace in the community.
A local Chinese gang is in the middle of a power struggle. Gang leader Madame Rose tries repeatedly to please her uncle, Mr. Sim, only to be looked down on. She holds a grudge against him and vows revenge.
Kham finally arrives in Sydney. After bumping into a Jackie Chan lookalike, he gets into a taxi driven by Jimmy, who is a crook in disguise. As a result, the taxi is stalked by the police the moment it leaves the airport. Mark is notified about Jimmy and gives chase in the city center, cornering Jimmy and Kham in an alley. Jimmy threatens to shoot Kham, but is subsequently disarmed by Kham and is shot dead by Inspector Vincent. Vincent then opens fire at Kham, causing him to run off. Puzzled by the actions of their superior, Mark and Rick run after Kham.
Kham is caught and driven away in Mark's car. Mark questions Kham about his motives in Sydney. Kham explains that he is looking for his relatives, who "look like elephants". On the way to the police station, the car passes by Tom Yum Goong Otob. Kham sees Johnny walking out of the restaurant. He starts yelling and asks Mark and Rick to follow his car. When the officers refuse, Kham strangles Rick, causing the car to lose control. Kham then runs off and severs his bonds. He then finds Johnny talking to Pla, a Thai student working as a prostitute.
Kham is held back by Johnny's minions. In spite of Pla's warnings not to get involved with the gang, Kham follows a minion as he jumps off a bridge. Suddenly, another gangster gets off a truck and tries to attack Kham. His knife is kicked from his hand. Kham then kicks the glass out of a tall street lamp, smashing it to pieces.
Johnny is in the middle of a drug deal inside a warehouse, where the minion leads Kham. While Kham begins to fight his men, the drug dealers get fed up and leave. Outraged, Johnny summons countless extreme sports enthusiasts, who arrive to fight Kham. Kham defeats them one by one, and finally faces a quad bike rider, whom he takes down as well.
Exhausted, Kham falls asleep in an alley. Pla finds him and brings him to her apartment. In his sleep, he dreams of an epic battle involving war elephants and the Jaturangkabart, the elephant protectors. When Pla leaves, Kham wakes up to the sound of police sirens, and climbs down a pipe to make his escape.
Meanwhile, Mark and Rick are taking the flak from Senior Inspector John Lamond for losing Kham and causing mayhem in the streets. They are taken off the case and re-assigned to provide security for the Secretary-General's meeting with Mr. Sim. In that particular meeting, Pla dresses up in a bikini and enters the mud bath with Mr. Sim and the Secretary-General. She splashes around in the mud, doing a sexy dance, while she is recorded by the Secretary-General's camera phone.
Suddenly, he feels pain in his chest, and Mr. Sim asks her to get him medicine. While she is in the cloakroom, Tui, the teenage robber, enters and shoots Mr. Sim, the Secretary-General and two other prostitutes dead. Mark and Rick are surprised by this, and it is revealed that the murder is instigated by Inspector Vincent. Vincent then kills Rick and Tui, and tries to frame Mark for the murder. Mark escapes, but is eventually captured.
Pla manages to escape, taking the camera phone with her. When she returns to her flat, she is grabbed by four policemen. As she is about to be loaded into the car, Kham arrives and beats up the cops. After she is saved, Pla reveals to Kham that she used to be a waitress at Tom Yum Goong Otob. Since Johnny and his men took over the management, it has been a living hell for all those who work there. She reveals a secret area in the back of the restaurant, reserved for VIPs.
With Pla's help, Kham enters Tom Yum Goong Otob. He demands to see Johnny, much to the surprise of the waitresses and the diners. He fights his way into the VIP area, built as a tower. He runs up the tower, defeating many thugs along the way. Reaching the dining hall at the top, where customers are feasting on exotic animals such as scorpion and turtle, Kham demands, "Where are my elephants?" and is met with the laughter of Johnny and his men. Johnny taunts Kham with Khorn's bell. This enrages Kham and he fights and defeats Johnny and his men.
Kham enters the storage area, with various animals like monkeys, pangolins,cats and bats ready to be butchered and eaten. He cries out for Khorn. He finds Mark tied up in a room filled with Thai prostitutes. He frees Mark and hides in a corner. Suddenly, Kham is touched by a snout of an elephant. It is Khorn. Kham and Mark escape the premises with the help of the Korean shopkeeper minutes before the police arrive. Meanwhile, Madame Rose is made the new leader of the Chinese gang after she murders two other possible successors.
The new manager of Tom Yum Goong is arrested for serving endangered animals. Inspector Vincent initiates a search for Kham and Mark, who are hiding in a Buddhist monastery. Eventually, the monastery is raided and set on fire. Fortunately, Kham and Mark are not there when it happens. But then Kham returns, and he faces a fierce Capoiera fighter and a Wushu sword fighter. Kham defeats them both. However, his third opponent, a giant wrestler (Nathan Jones, who also played a wrestler in the 2006 Jet Li film, Fearless), proves way too much for Kham. Kham is only saved when the police arrive. He flees with Mark.
Mark and Kham sleep on the grass facing Sydney Harbour. Mark offers to get Kham and Khorn out of the country and back to Thailand, but Kham refuses. By the next morning, Kham has left with Khorn. Mark is then discovered by several policemen, sending him to deal with Inspector Vincent, whom Pla has revealed to be the real murderer.
Kham arrives at a conference hall where Madame Rose is having a press conference. Khorn runs in, scaring off every one while Kham engages the gangsters. He later finds Khorn in an elevator lobby, and Vincent threatens to shoot him. Mark suddenly arrives on the floor in an elevator and disarms Vincent, shooting his men dead. He punches and kicks Vincent repeatedly while insulting him. Suddenly, Johnny enters and shoots Vincent dead, telling Mark that he came to settle the score. He then leaves and taunts Mark to catch him.
Kham finds himself with Khorn in a huge room, and he is shown the skeleton of Por Yai, encrusted with jewels as a gift to Madame Rose. He is so upset by the loss of his companion that he spends a minute being beaten up by Rose's men while he reminisces. Finally, he decides to fight when he is stabbed and he then beats them all up (while breaking at least one bone in each opponents body). Eventually, the wrestler from the monastery is called in and Madame Rose is helping him fight Kham using a bull whip. Three more giant wrestlers are called in. Khorn is grabbed and thrown through a glass wall. Kham is knocked into the elephant ornament, and two leg bones fall off. Kham ties them around his arms and uses them as clubs to knock the wrestlers out. The two bones then splinter into two sharp fragments.
Kham then remembers something his father told him. The weakest parts of the elephant are its tendons. If they are severed, the elephant will fall. Kham then does that to the hulking wrestlers, who fall quickly. He stops Madame Rose before she can escape in a helicopter, and the two crash through the roof and land in the room. Madame Rose is knocked unconscious, while Kham's fall is cushioned by the tusks of Por Yai.
Back in the lobby, Mark is shown Pla, and is forgiven by Inspector Lamond. He is shown his new partner, who speaks Thai. Mark is then asked by a reporter about Kham.
Finally, a narration from Mark about elephants is heard, with scenes of Kham's childhood shown. Mark explains that Thai people treat elephants like they are their brothers, and they hate people who hurt them. Thais love peace, but dislike people who take liberties. In the last scene, Kham is reunited with Khorn.
[edit] Cast
- Tony Jaa as Kham
- Petchtai Wongkamlao as Sgt. Mark
- Bongkoj Khongmalai as Pla
- Xing Jing as Madame Rose
- Nathan Jones as T.K.
- Johnny Nguyen as Johnny
- Lateef Crowder as Capoeira fighter
- Jon Foo as Wushu fighter
- Damian De Montemas as Vincent
- David Asavanond as Officer Rick
- Sotorn Rungruaeng as Kham's Father
[edit] Cameo appearances
- Pumwaree Yodkamol, who co-starred in Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior, is seen briefly, portraying a Thai tourist in a Sydney street scene. She berates a friend of hers about DVD piracy.
- Wannakit Sirioput who also co starred in Ong Bak (as Don) cameos at the end of the film as Mark's new partner.
- An impressionist portrays Jackie Chan, whom Kham briefly encounters at the airport in Sydney.
- Another impressionist portrays Thai rocker Sek Loso, the pitchman for the M-150 energy drink, which is among the brands with product placement throughout the film.
[edit] Production
[edit] Technical aspects
Compared to Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior, which was noted for its lack of wirework and CGI, this movie uses CGI in several scenes, from the obvious (helicopter scene, and an entirely computer-animated dream sequence), to the subtle (a glass window shattering in the four-minute steadicam shot that follows Jaa up several flights of stairs as he dispatches thug after thug in dramatic fashion).
The largest example of CGI is Tony Jaa's dramatic leap from the top of a building to attack Madame Rose with a double knee attack. While the background was blue screen (as shown on the right) with the Australian backdrop added in post production, the long fall shown on screen was real as Jaa and a stuntperson pulled the scene off, landing on large mats below. Even in scenes like this with blue screen, a stunt double would be called in for the lead actor, but Jaa once again made sure he did the stunt himself.
[edit] Fighting styles
Tony Jaa incorporates a new style of muay Thai into this movie (มวยคชสาร, "muaykodchasarn", roughly translated as "Elephant Boxing"), emphasizing grappling moves. "I wanted to show the art of the elephant combined with muay Thai," Tony told the Associated Press in an interview, adding that the moves imitate how an elephant would defend itself, with the arms acting as the trunk.
[edit] Stuntwork
Many aspiring stuntmen sent demo tapes, hoping to be cast in the film. An American stunt actor was cast but didn't properly take the impact and was injured on the first take. "He kicked me, I used my arm to block his kick, and he fell down hard," Tony told the Associated Press.
However, no one was hospitalized in the making of the film, with injuries limited to "bumps and bruises, muscle tears, a little something like that. Nothing major," Tony said.[1]
The fights include duels with:
- Wushu martial artist (Jon Foo).
- A Vietnamese triad captain (portrayed by Spider-man stunt double Johnny Nguyen).
- A capoeira fighter (Lateef Crowder of the Zero Gravity Stunt Team).
- A 6' 10", extraordinarily strong bodyguard (former WWE wrestler Nathan Jones – Brad Pitt's first opponent in the movie Troy)
- A whip-wielding triad boss (world renowned ballerina Jing Xing).
[edit] Alternate versions
International sales rights (outside Asia) were purchased by TF1, which made suggestions for re-editing to director Prachya Pinkaew, who then made some cuts that slightly reduce the film's running time from its original 110 minutes.
The UK title is Warrior King, and the theatrical release was on July 28, 2006. In France and Belgium, the title is L'Honneur du dragon, and in the Netherlands and other European it is Honour of the Dragon. In Cambodia, the film is called Neak Prodal Junboth.
[edit] Subtitle issues
As with Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior English-language subtitled DVDs of Tom-Yum-Goong were not made available when the movie was distributed for home video in Asia. One of the pirated versions of the movie had subtitles that refer to the main character as "Jin" despite it saying "Kham" on the back of the box. Also, the subtitles for the spoken English did not match what was being said. Counterfeit editions of the DVD also marketed the film as "Ong Bak 2", which was the Thai working title of the film but has been re-applied to the sequel to Ong-Bak, Ong-Bak 2.
[edit] US release as The Protector
The Weinstein Company purchased the US distribution rights for Tom-Yum-Goong and retitled it The Protector (also the name of a 1985 Jackie Chan film). The film was released theatrically in the US on September 8, 2006. It was released in January 2007 on DVD on The Weinstein Company's Dragon Dynasty label in a two-disc set that includes both the US edit and the original Thai version of the film.[2]
For the US theatrical cut, the film's length was reduced by at least 25 minutes, going so far as to trim down some of the fight scenes, even though it was given an "R" rating restricting audiences to people aged 17 and over. Out of all cuts outside of Thailand, it is the shortest cut of the film, even more so than the European cuts. It also features a new score by RZA. Some parts of the missing footage (including cuts to the "bone breaker" fight and Madame Rose envisioning herself in a red dress as queen) appeared in the US trailer and US TV Spots.
Also, The Protector is partially subtitled and partially dubbed, with all of Jaa's dialogue subtitled. Several changes were made to the plot through editing and subtitles that did not match the spoken Thai and Chinese dialogue.
Changes that were made to the US theatrical release include:
- The historical role of the Thai warriors is given in more detail in the opening prologue
- Scenes of TV reporters given tour of Sydney by Sgt. Mark are removed.
- Scenes of Sgt. Mark handling robbery and releasing the would-be assassin are removed.
- Kham's father, rather than being injured, died by the gunshot.
- Tony Jaa's lines now include "You killed my father!"
- Madame Rose loses face and is denied a "security" contract over bad turtle soup instead of the Chinese business leader's refusal to deal because of bad terms.
- Madame Rose is never mentioned as being a transsexual.
- The ending has been trimmed to imply that Madame Rose is dead rather than just injured after her fall through the roof.
- Johnny does not return to kill Vincent after Vincent was apprehended by Mark.
- Exposition is given to further explain the cutting of tendons to defeat the bruisers at the end.
- The ending epilogue given by Sgt. Mark in the US version is significantly different and nobler than the Thai version, which is whimsical and comic relief in tone and is much less concerned with resolution.
[edit] Reception
[edit] Box office
Tom-Yum-Goong opened in Thailand on August 11, 2005, and grossed US$1,609,720 in its first weekend and was No. 1 at the Thai box office (normally dominated by Hollywood imports) for two weeks in a row.[3] It ended its Thai run with US$4,417,800, blockbuster business by Thai standards.[4]
The Weinstein Company released Tom-Yum-Goong in North America in a heavily-edited version entitled The Protector, which was the first release by their Dragon Dynasty label. It was also given the "Quentin Tarantino Presents" brand, which had proven lucrative in the past for films like Hero and Hostel. It opened in 1,541 cinemas on September 8, 2006 and ranked No. 4 in its opening weekend, grossing $5,034,180 ($3,226 per screen). It ended its run with $12,044,087.[5] In the US, it ranks 67th among martial arts films and 14th among foreign films.
The film's total worldwide box office gross is $25,715,096 USD. It is the most successful Thai film released in the US.[6]
[edit] References
- ^ Pearson, Ryan. September 5, 2006. "Breaking down the beatdown", Associated Press (retrieved January 4, 2007).
- ^ Tom Yum Goong DVD comparison, Premier Asia vs Dragon Dynasty (retrieved January 11, 2007).
- ^ 2005 Thailand Box Office Index, Box Office Mojo, retrieved January 4, 2006.
- ^ Thailand Box Office September 1–4, 2005, Box Office Mojo, retrieved January 4, 2006.
- ^ Weekend Box Office, September 8-10, 2006, Box Office Mojo, retrieved January 4, 2007.
- ^ The Protector, Box Office Mojo, retrieved January 4, 2007.
[edit] External links
