Power Kids

Power Kids is an awkward fusion of kids and Thai martial arts cinema. Combine one part Muay Thai with two parts sappy melodrama and you get a final product that just doesn’t measure up to other Thai action flicks.

I am a big fan of Somtum, so I was excited to get a look at Power Kids. It features some of the same stars, most notably Sasisa Jindamanee. Johnny Nguyen shows up as the head bad guy, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing more of him since seeing the Vietnamese martial arts film The Rebel. The movie was produced by Ong Bak director Prachya Pinkaew and action choreography wizard Panna Rittikrai (who ranks among the best fight choreographers today, alongside Yuen Woo-ping and Donnie Yen).

The plot revolves around a group of kids that hang out at a Muay Thai training facility. One of the kids is sick and requires a heart transplant. As luck would have it, a donor becomes available, but just as the heart arrives, the hospital is seized by terrorists. With only a few hour window before the heart becomes unusable, the kids spring into action against the terrorists to get the heart for their friend.

Unfortunately the film doesn’t contain enough action to make sitting through the sappy bits worthwhile. The action isn’t as hard-hitting as you might expect in a Thai film, especially one containing the star of Somtum. There are fewer action sequences than you might expect, and none of them are exceptional.

That’s not to say there’s no action worth seeing; the movie certainly has better action than most kid kung fu films, especially any western film of this nature. The biggest problem is probably the tone of the film. The attempts at serious drama are undermined by some of the sillier fights and the goofiness of having kids fight armed terrorists. There’s also too much violence and bloodshed for this to be a kids film, but not enough real action to win over adults. I have no idea who the film’s target audience is.

Things do get better when the action ratchets up in the last third of the film, but by then it’s too little too late. I can’t recommend Power Kids to anyone other than Thai action film junkies, and even then I’d suggest steering clear unless you’ve already exhausted other films in the genre such as Somtum, Ong Bak 1& 2, Chocolate, or even the deeply flawed Raging Phoenix.