Chocolate

..is the name of a wonderful foodstuff and also of an average martial arts film with pretty good fight scenes.

As mentioned in previous articles I'm not a big fan of the genre, but a good friend reckoned I should check out this Prachya Pinkaew (maker of Ong Bak and Warrior King) film. Although this was somewhat tedious with a very bizarre storyline I didn't feel like I wanted my 170minutes back. The gangster plot is led by an autistic (?) girl with amazing reaction abilities who learns fighting skills from films and her rather annoying fat side kick's helping exercises.

The fight scenes are epic and also quite entertaining. It feels like there's much inspiration from Jackie Chan films with acrobatics galore, rolls and use of the immediate environment to enhance the entertainment value of the fights. This comes to an amazing head at the end of the film with great struggles along balconies in a Thai street.

My favourite part of the film is when the heroine, JeeJa Yanin, takes massed killers with two (empty) saya (sword scabbards). What a wonderful idea! My iai teacher always said the nihon to was a two piece weapon....

If you like martial arts movies I guess you're going to love this! If, like me, you're not so into it, you might find the hammy acting and two dimensional characters a touch annoying but might enjoy the fights.

Watch out for the 'documentary' clips at the end of the film...!

Killing Machine

I have a deep, dark and for a martial artist, a terrible, terrible secret. It's ok though. I'm happy with myself. I can say it... I'm a martial artist and I don't like martial arts films.

Gasp.

I know.

I've even had some people say to me that the reason they started practicing martial arts was because of the Bruce Lee films they saw! Dutifully I've tried. I really have but the best I can say about them is that they're crap. None of the fancy choreography or fight sequences do anything for me.

Sadly the latest film I watched called 'Killing Machine' (1976) didn't really change my mind either. It's fairly rough and ready and quite badly put together and cliche is piled upon cliche so I hardly warmed to it. There is, however, quite an interesting story underpinning the whole film, that this is the (unofficial) biography of Shorinji Kempo. So for me to say the fight sequences are lame might put me on thin ice. There's plenty for kenshi to enjoy in the film but you'd think that the only technique in Shorinji Kempo was gyaku gote!

The actors are quite obviously trained kenshi and this raises the film somewhat but it can't mask the true nature of this film and that is as a corporate video. OK so it's the way they might do corporate videos in 1976! The film shows the development of Shorinji Kempo after the war and the hot-headed Doshin So's efforts to create a dojo for the betterment of the common people. These are fine fundamentals and they still remain at the heart of kempo. As such the film does have a certain inherent value but I'd say only for the die hard Kenshi or maybe martial arts film geek. Sonny Chiba is 'good' in the film.

Bit cheesy, good kempo moves from Chiba, interesting as a training/research 'aid' or insight.