Raging Phoenix
2010; directed by Rashane Limtrakul

After the international success of Chocolate, young Thai martial arts phenomenon Jija Yanin returns in Raging Phoenix, a film that mixes up Muay Thai, drunken boxing, and hip-hop dancing in a quest to save young women who have been kidnapped so that their tears can be harvested to make the world's most expensive perfume. Now, while that might sound like a recipe for terrible B-movie schlock, the end results are actually very fun, and go a long way to establishing Jija as a major new player in the martial arts movie world.

At the beginning, Raging Phoenix teeters towards the dark (as in poorly made) side of the cinematic rainbow as the movie jumps all over the map. Thai action movies, like their Hong Kong counterparts, seem to delight in mixing up genres, and you'll often see highly dramatic scenes followed up by silly slapstick. This is turned up even more in Thai releases through elements like transgender "ladyboy" characters that you're not sure if they're supposed to be taken seriously or are being used as the butt of jokes. By the time the first major fight sequence occurs in Raging Phoenix, and it begins with a violent kidnapping and ends with the heroes using breakdancing to defeat their opponents, one could be forgiven if they don't know where the hell this movie is going.

Once things move into the seemingly mandatory training portion of the film, the focus becomes more clear, and Raging Phoenix begins to climb out of the depths of mediocrity and becomes a quality martial arts picture. Even with some obvious wirework used in parts, there is still no denying that there is some major skill on display here from all of the actors, Jija in particular. There is a wonderful lack of overboard CGI, tired Matrix style effects, or double and triple-takes of the more powerful moves, which gives the fight scenes a lovely and striking flow to them that ends up producing some of the finer martial arts work to come out of Asia over the past couple of years.

Things aren't totally perfect here. The movie feels a bit overlong, and probably could have lost many of the flashback sequences used. Acting-wise, Jija shows some nice growth from her one-note character in Chocolate, but still isn't going to be in line to win an Oscar anytime soon, and most of the rest of the cast falls into the same slot. And, getting back to the plot, the pure ludicrousness of the story doesn't really seem necessary. A standard bit about a gang kidnapping young women would have been fine. The elements such as "sniffers" who seek out ladies with special pheromones just come off as superfluous and don't add much (if anything) to the story as a whole. But in the end, Raging Phoenix offers up enough quality fisticuffs that it deserves to be checked out by any serious martial arts fan.

RATING: 7

DVD Information

Released through Magnolia's genre label, Magnet, the main feature on the DVD runs 114 minutes and sports a crisp anamorphic widescreen picture in a 1.78:1 ratio. The Dolby 5.1 soundtrack can be listened to in Thai or English, with easy to read English and Spanish subtitles available. Extras include trailers for the movie and several other Magnolia releases, as well as two ten-minute behind-the-scenes featurettes.

The DVD and Blu-Ray are available at Amazon.