Movie Trailer: Thai Actioner Chocolate
By Nix | January 4, 2008 (10:49 am) | More: Chocolate (2008) Movie, Movie Trailers
So yesterday when doing a preview of Prachya Pinkaew’s new Thai martial arts actioner “Chocolate” I was lamenting that there wasn’t a trailer anywhere. Ask and ye shall receive! I just stumbled across the trailer over at Imprint, and despite the title of the movie, “Chocolate” looks very much like a bone-breaking combat film in the vein of “Ong Bak” and “Tom Yum Goong”. Except, er, with a girl instead of a skinny Thai guy.
‘Chocolate’ stars newcomer Nicharee “Jeeja” Vismistananda as an autistic girl who learns how to fight both by absorbing her martial arts skills from what she sees on TV and from the Muay thai boxing school next to her home. When she finds a list of debtors in her sick mother’s diary, she decides to go collecting. Her quest leads her to confrontations with criminal gangs and also her father, a member of the Japanese mafia.
Get kickin’ February 2008.
Via:






It does indeed look similar to Ong Bak and Tom Yum Goong. Still, with a female lead and the “autistic” twist, it might be different enough to dispell the “I’ve seen this before” feeling I got with TYG.
the trailer is awesome. when this movie comes to theatres,everybody
who likes martial arts movies is going to say that this movie is
amazing.
That black and white footage looks like an accident during filming.
Regardless, this film looks like it’ll be badass, plus the trailer music gives me goosebumps.
Prachya Pinkaew’s movie storylines have never been that great, but I think the autism thing is lame. Mostly because I work with kids with autism and it’s unrealistic to think that all kids with disabilities have some magical gift. All the kids I’ve worked with are just awesome period.
As for the action, everyone’s pretty much a human punching bag except for some small parts towards the end. This form of action was really awe inspiring when Ong Bak intially came out, but it’s starting to feel a little stale. This movie made the same mistake as Tom Yum Goong: too much focus on flashy moves against “willing to accept punishment without retaliation opponents,” not enough focus on choreography and a “let’s smash people through everything and make them fall from high heights” mentality. The staircase scene for example in Tom Yum Goong; Tony Jaa was so tired when he reached the top (due to it being one long shot), yet by just flailing his arms around, his opponents all tumbled down the stairs like dominos.
The lead actress is skilled none the less, I just hope her next movie will show us a little more of her own flavor versus that of just Tony Jaa.