The Protector

There is a scene early in The Protector where the film's hero, played by martial arts superstar Tony Jaa, has a brief run-in with Jackie Chan at an airport. It is supposed to symbolize a kind of passing of the torch, I think, from one action star to the future generation. If this is so, Jaa has a long way to go in order to match the personality and wit that Chan holds in many of his films. There's no denying that Jaa is an amazing fighter, but the movie that surrounds him is a masochistic, sloppily edited, and flat out bizarre love story between a man and his elephant. Perhaps the heavy edits the film has undergone on its way to the US cinema are to blame. After all, this film was originally around 2 hours in its original format, but now it runs a very brief 80 minutes. What I did see of the movie was enough to let me know I didn't want to see what had been cut out.

Tony Jaa plays Cam, a Thailand warrior skilled in an ancient and deadly martial art who lives by an old code. His people believe that a "perfect" elephant is an important element to a king's rule, and can bring endless power to the ruler. It is Cam's job to protect the pachyderms, and make sure they grow up to be worthy for a king. So, you certainly can't blame the guy for getting more than a little ticked off when some gangsters steal his two prized elephants, and kill his father. He takes off to Sydney to track down the guilty party, and discovers an underground world of illegal animal dealings and cruelty, prostitution, and murder. That's when the butt kicking starts, and never stops literally until there's no one left for Cam to kill. (Which is about 12 seconds before the end credits start to roll.)

This "Quentin Tarantino Production" is a hopelessly muddled attempt at bringing a popular martial arts film from overseas to US mainstream fame. I don't know who was in charge of the edits, but The Protector comes across as if it were edited by someone on the largest caffeine high ever in the recorded history of mankind. The movie jumps from scene to scene without a single care for continuity or plot. One second, Jaa is involved in a lengthy fight scene with some psychotic extreme sports enthusiasts, then as soon as the last body has hit the ground, he's suddenly lying lifeless in an alley for no reason whatsoever. Another example includes a scene where Jaa is riding down the street with a police officer friend in a car, then it suddenly cuts to Jaa standing in the middle of a burning building with bodies lying all around him, and muscular rejects from a WWE casting call coming at him. The movie never stops once to explain just what the heck is supposed to be happening, nor does it stop to clue us in on the characters who play roles in our story. Jaa's Cam comes across as a psychotic lunatic who will break every bone in your body if you get in the way of his search for his elephants. The fact that the only line of dialogue he has in this film is to scream "Where is my elephant?" over and over makes him all the more disinteresting to just about any audience.

Fortunately, there are some impressive fight scenes to help keep the audience awake. The main highlight is a scene where Jaa runs up a series of floors, quickly dispatching wave after wave of attackers. The scene is completely unbroken (or at least it seems that way), and is executed almost flawlessly. Jaa is quite obviously very good at what he does, and is a natural talent. With the right script and the right career choices, I sincerely believe he could have a very good chance at US stardom. Unfortunately, the film bombards us with so many fight scenes (some that come literally less than a minute apart from each other) that they start to wear out their novelty long before the film is over. It might have helped if Jaa's character did not come across as superhuman, able to have just about every bone in his body shattered, or fall right through a skylight from a helicopter, and still be able to stand back up again. It'd be really ridiculous if the movie itself didn't take everything so darn seriously.

That's ultimately what sinks The Protector. The movie lacks personality, and is just not very fun to watch. The sloppy rapid fire editing as the film jumps from scene to scene makes it a headache to follow. There are plenty of cool fights, but not one single thing that allows us to sympathize or make us want to see the main character succeed. Actually, the main character comes across as some kind of overly violent animal rights extremist. I don't know, maybe something got lost in the translation from one country to another. All I know is The Protector left me feeling like a lot of talent went into making very little.

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