Choclate (dvd review)

When I saw Ong-Bak in theaters back in ’03, I was blown away by what I was watching onscreen.  Tony Jaa is simply amazing to watch perform.  His acting may be questionable at best, but his martial arts skills are comparable to none.  He is, by far, the best martial artist/actor working today.  Whether he’s kicking or punching someone, jumping through plate glass, or sliding under a car while doing the splits – you can’t possibly be disappointed while watching.

Sadly, the same cannot be said for Jeejaw Yanin’s performance in Choclate.  Choclate is Jeejaw’s first feature film and while she is clearly quite the skilled martial artist, she is just unbelievable in the role.  She spends the majority of the movie beating up thugs upon thugs, but never once delivers a kick or punch that one could believe to be strong enough to knock someone out.  While ‘flashy’, her performance comes off as all style and no substance.  To be honest, I don’t think it is Jeejaw’s fault.  Prachya Pinkaew may have directed the awesomeness that is Ong-Bak, but he followed it up with the less-than-thrilling The Protector.  To rebound from the atrocity that was, Chocolate would need to succeed on several levels.  Unfortunately for Pinkaew, it doesn’t.  In fact, the fall from grace somewhat reminds me of Tom Tykwer.  Tykwer directed the mindblowing Run Lola Run, then followed it up with the incredibly messofafilm The Princess and the Warrior.  However, he eventually rebounded with Paris, je t’aime, and then with Perfume (one of my favorite movies – ever).  Chocolate is no Paris, je t’aime and it is certainly no Perfume.  At this rate, Pinkaew still has a lot of growing to do.

The Movie:

Chocolate is the story of a girl, Zen, who is the special needs daughter born from two very dangerous people.  Zen grows up with her mother, who soon develops cancer.  Moom, Zen’s friend, discovers Zen has amazing reflexes and uses her gift to help generate family income.  Soon Zin becomes deathly sic, and Moom and Zen set out to collect from Zin’s past debtors in hopes of earning enough money to pay for chemo.

This is where the action begins, as Zen quickly learns that in order to get money from each of the debtor’s, she must use her ‘mad martial arts skills’ to do so.  And sadly, it’s here where the film really takes a turn for the worse.  Clearly the premise is unique, autistic girl who uses a unique ability to whoop ass.  Sure, clever.  However, I’m a little unsure of the overly complicated premise, which seems poorly designed to serve only as an excuse for Jeejaw to show off her talents.  And, as previously stated, while she may be talented, there’s no belief here that she is actually beating these guys up.  That’s what is so overly frustrating about the film.  At not one point do I believe the scenario I’m watching unfold, nor do I believe that what she’s doing is actually registering on any level.

That’s not to say that Jeejaw couldn’t kick my ass.  I’m sure she could.  But if she’s doing it with the ferocity shown here, it would take her a solid hour before I would eventually  give up.  There’s just no power behind anything going on onscreen.  All of it looks completely scripted, and that is the film’s major flaw. 

The story is completely out of leftfield, and the longer the film went on, the more complicated and ludicrous it became.  So much so, that the main antagonist in the film has cross-dressers as his main hired goons.  That’s not to say that cross-dressers can’t be hired goons, I’m just not sure why these are.  Added to the fact that they seem so completely out of place, well, it was just frustrating. 

In my Let the Right One In review, I commented on how foreign directors have been picking up the slack where American directors have left off.  Sadly, this theory does not apply to Chocolate.