Released: 2008
Starring: JeeJa Yanin, Hiroshi Abe, Pongpat Wachirabunjong
Fight Choreography: Panna Rittikrai
Director: Prachya Pinkaew
The premise of this movie is interesting. Zin (Ammara Siripon) is the ex-girlfriend of a Thai mob boss. She ends up falling in love with Masashi (Hiroshi Abe), who is a Yakuza gangster. The mob boss banishes both of them sending Masashi to Japan, and, Zin and her daughter Zen (JeeJa Yanin) to live beside a martial arts school. Zen is a young autistic girl. She has uncanny reflexes shown by the way she catches any thing thrown to her. Zin is diagnosed with cancer and needs chemotherapy but she can‘t afford it. She hires a kid named Moom to watch over and attend to Zen. Moom finds a ledger of many Thai gangsters who owe Zin money, and with this money Zin could pay for her treatments. Moom goes on a mission to confront the gangsters, with Zen being his enforcer.
Zen learns the martial arts by watching the students next door to where they live, as well as by watching Tony Jaa and Bruce Lee movies. This makes for an interesting concept of training.
There are cool bits of animation and some artistic cinematography in this film. The fight scenes are pretty realistic, and there is no real obvious cable work. (Is this a Thai movie tradition?)
Although Zen kicks a lot of ass in most of the movie, there are no real memorable fight scenes. Chocolate also features a lot of firearms, which I’m personally not a fan of. I like it when films stick to traditional martial arts weapons. Although, there is a good share of improvised weaponry used throughout., overall, some of the fight scenes are pretty sloppy, especially toward the end.
This is only JeeJa’s first movie, so maybe things will get better if she sticks to martial arts cinema. I’ve only recently started watching Thai martial arts movies, with the debut of Tony Jaa. I’m interested in seeing more though.
Brutality: 3 out of 5 Bruises
Overall: 3 out of 5 Shuriken
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