Written by Linda
October 18, 2008
If you are looking for an entertaining martial arts movie, it can't get much sillier than Dynamite Warrior. The setting: The Old West. No... wait. The Old Far East? The Old Northeast Thailand? It is sometime in the late-1800s, and cattle rustling is big business. In fact, due to new trading, Thai rice is in big demand, so much so that there aren't enough oxen for all the farms. Gangs of bad guys are roaming the land, stealing herds and wreaking havoc.
Enter our hero! A masked man out in the plains, fighting the good fight for the farmers, shows up to kick some cattle-rustler butt... ON A ROCKET! Yes, Jone Bang Fai (Dan Chupong) flies into the scene, riding a rocket like a surfboard as the rest of his fireworks rain upon the rustlers in a mass of sparks and confusion. Wooo-hoo! Uh... what? He leaps off, shows off his serious Muay Thai skills, and leaves the rustlers writhing on the ground in pain. The lone hero delivers the cattle back to the desperate farmers who need them in order to compete against...
Lord Waeng (Puttipong Sriwat aka Leo Putt) and his tractors! Another menace is this prancing Lord-wannabe who wants to get rich selling the revolutionizing new import, the tractor, and if that doesn't work, why he'll get rich anyway becoming a lord of the cattle rustling thugs. Lord Waeng, with his cartoonish flip of bouffant hair (which impressively never collapses) recruits a pack of baddies, including a towering growling giant of a guy who bears more than a passing resemblance to Jaws of James Bond fame. The Thief (hilariously played by Somdej Keawlue) is most effective when he's hungry, then he is out to clobber anyone in the way of a platter of food.
It turns out Jone Bang Fai and Lord Waeng are after the same guy: the magician Sing (Samart Tipthamai), who is not only a cattleman (Waeng wants his herd), but Jone Bang Fai believes Sing killed his parents when he was a child. How does he know he has the right man? A mysterious tattoo covering Sing's chest.
Chaos and trickery ensues, with many many fight scenes in between. The mood is light, and the special effects goofy yet effective. And dare I say, Dynamite Warrior is actually a noticably good-looking movie—the photography makes this region of Northeast Thailand a gloriously dusty and mysterious outback, a landscape that would fit into any Hollywood Western.
On the IMDB, there seem to be two camps of fans watching the new breed of Thai martial arts films. There are those that prefer the serious bad-assness of movies like Ong-Bak and The Protector (both starring Tony Jaa, who is as weak an actor as he is an awesome fighter). These peeps seem to hate the silliness of Dynamite Warrior. But heck, I actually enjoyed it. If your lead guy is not the strongest when it comes to emoting (Dan Chupong suffers the same problem as Jaa), well, heck, you may as well at least surround them with humor and hijinks!
