The Protector

This heavily-edited, English-dubbed version of astonishingly acrobatic Thai martial artist Tony Jaa's follow-up to Ong Bak is so narratively muddled as to be virtually incoherent. The plot finds Jaa's character Kham traveling to Australia to retrieve elephants he and his father raised that have been pachyderm-napped by gangsters, forcing Kham to square off against a number of thugs and corrupt cops. Of course, there are only so many times you can suppress a laugh when Kham bursts in on a bunch of ne'er-do-wells and demands in halting English, “Where are my elephants?” But the chases and fight scenes are the raison d'être of Prachya Pinkaew's The Protector, and they're fantastic, from a river chase involving speedboats and helicopters, to a finale in which Kham must face simultaneously a trio of giants, a whip-wielding villainess, and yet another helicopter. But the pièce de résistance is a breathtaking one-shot sequence in which Kham breaks into a gaudy multi-floor club and literally battles up each flight of stairs, dispatching foe after foe, until confronting a villain on the top floor. Unfortunately, Jaa's incredible martial arts talents (when not fighting he's walking wood) are shoehorned into a nonsensical plot in an abominably edited film. But the jaw-dropping action sequences still make this a strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)