The Protector

How does one review a movie when the only reason I watched the movie was for the martial arts? Does it seem worth it to talk about the plot or the acting or writing, or do I just make note of the action sequences? I admit this is quite a tough quandary! I usually pass on Asian martial arts epics because they rely too much on fantasy with the flying trough trees and unbeatable odds but this one had something in the trailer that spoke to me. The action looked real, without the wires and neat camera tricks and I was most certainly right.

If you want a basic overview of the story it goes as such: The character grows up in a tribe in Thailand that worships elephants. Elephants are the symbols of gods. He and his father are raising an elephant that they hope will be the one chosen to carry their king. The elephant and his baby are stolen and shipped to Sydney, where it looks as if they will be killed to be put into food at a restaurant apparently run by a hermaphrodite. I cannot be sure the person is a hermaphrodite but a few lines of dialogue hint at the character not really being a man or a woman. Our lead character goes to Sydney meets an odd ball cop and goes on the war path looking for his elephants. The movie is half spoken in the Thai language and half in broken English and none of it seems to make a lick of sense. The editing is poor at best and the acting is so terrible it is laughable, but the action, oh the action.


Let me first say it takes far to long to get to a good action sequence. We don’t see any real martial arts for the first 30 minutes or so, but when we finally get one it does not disappoint. In our first real action scene, our elephant searching Thai man is faced with about 25 enemies on foot, rollerblades, bikes and motorcycles. Many of them are wielding giant swords of fluorescent light. This takes place in an abandoned building of some sort and the choreography is breathtaking. Our lead character weave sin and out of stationary subway car doors and windows. He does the splits under bars, darts through fencing and at one point walks on his hands across a ledge all while picking his spots to kick the hell out of these leather jacket wearing wannabe ninjas. The slow motion usage is borderline brilliant. After this scene we get 4 more stunning fights. The final two are so spectacular in their carnage I was almost queasy, which is exactly how I like them. He faces about 45 different baddies and with each one he breaks no less than 4 bones somewhere eon their bodies and with each crack we hear the biggest snapping and cracking sounds ever given to bones in movies. It is sheer brutality yet, the sounds have an almost joyous rhythm to them.


In the conclusion of the film our protagonist must face 4 mammoth looking men. He stands about 5’8” maybe 5’9” and goes about 185lbs and these 4 guys are over 7’ 300lbs of pure cut muscle. These fights are brutal on both ends but he takes most of whipping until he straps on some elephant bones and lays a serious beating to these four. He still can’t defeat them until he remembers his father told him that when people want to take out elephants they go for the tendons and he applies that knowledge to these four beastly men. Yes, we see and hear him slashing Achilles heels, shoulder, wrists and other joints and tendons. He uses these elephant bones as knives and these monsters are his masterpiece. It is both disgusting yet pleasant to watch, which may make me a sicko, but it is exactly what I signed up for on this one!