Somtum

A Thai action/comedy about food, family, and fighting.  Sound too tame? How about some displaced giant Australians, papaya combat, diamond smuggling, and psychotic pro-wrestling thugs tearing entire scenes apart amidst some great Muay Thai kickboxing?

You might think that a Thai action/comedy starring the enormous Nathan Jones (who you may have seen as the giant fighting Tony Jaa in Tom Yum Goong)  would be full of pro-wrestling madness, but you'd only be a little bit right.  The real star of this film is Sasisa Jindamanee, a teenage girl and Muay Thai phenom that puts on some of the best fights I've seen this year. Sasisa was the pint-sized Muay Thai fighter in Born to Fight, a movie I adore for the stunts alone.

Barney Emerald (Nathan Jones) is an Aussie who's won a trip to a village in Thailand. Unfortunately he's a born loser; he quickly gets drunk and robbed of everything, including his passport and the shirt off his back. The local police can't help him much, so he winds up penniless on the streets.

A chance encounter leads Barney to try to protect pickpocket Katen (Nawarat Techarathanaprasert) from some thugs. Despite his huge size and musculature, Barney's something of a pacifist, and he winds up on the end of a savage beating. At least until Katen's sister Doka (Sasisa Jindamanee) arrives in a whirlwind of feet, knees, and elbows.

Barney tags along with the girls and accidentally destroys their mother's restraunt (the whole building) when he finds that eating her spicy specialty Somtum turns him into a red raging hulk-like monster. Distraught, he insists that he'll do anything to make it up to them and help get the place rebuilt.

Ever wanted to see Nathan Jones dance at a strip club?  You might get your wish! But you'll also get to see lots of really excellent Muay Thai. Panna Rittikrai handled the action choreography, and it's superb. The insane papaya battle alone is worth the price of admission to this film. Sasisa Jindamanee manages to capture the brutal yet incredibly graceful, almost Aikido-like magic of Muay Boran in this sequence. Top notch.
 
There are plenty of other fights on display and lots of them are good too, including a finale where Nathan Jones gets a chance to tear things up Incredible Hulk style. I'm not a big fan of pro-wrestling, but they put on a fine show here amidst some great stunts and continued Muay Thai combat. Look out for an entire plane being torn to pieces.

It's all encapsulated in a sweet, funny movie that I enjoyed a lot. And I've learned that if you go to Thailand you should NEVER piss off the papaya girl! Highly recommended to folks that like Thai action films.