Chocolate | DVD Review

Apparently trying to take things up a notch in the storytelling department after the ground-breaking martial arts sequences of his Ong-bak and the outlandish premise (though equally impressive fight sequences) of the bodyguard-to-an-elephant The Protector, Thai director Prachya Pinkaew has delivered another strange scenario complimented by over-the-top action sequences, with an autistic young lady as the ass-kicking protagonist. As crazy as that sounds, Chocolate actually works quite well, thanks in no small part to the perfomance of JeeJa Yanin in the lead role.

Zen (newcomer Yanin) is a young autistic girl born of a forbidden love between two criminals, one Thai and one Japanese. Her mother (Ammara Siripong), fearing for her safety, goes into hiding with Zen to get away from the crime family she was involved with. We witness Zen watching – nay, studying – martial arts films on TV and spending hours spying the kick-boxing school next door. When her mother gets cancer and is in need of money to pay for the treatments, Zen finds a ledger that lists her mother’s debtors and sets out to collect from them. It’s not as easy as it seems and Zen has no choice but to use violence to get the money, drawing attention to herself in the process and setting the stage for a showdown that promises to be spectacularly violent.

It’s actually a simple story from screenwriters Chukiat Sakveerakul (13: Game of Death) and Napalee (The Protector), but it’s a breath of fresh air in a genre that usually relies on the simple premise of a country greenhorn having to make it on the mean streets of the big city. As implausible as the character of Zen seems, Yanin makes it work, going from vulnerable young girl one moment to fiercely violent martial artist the next, and making the audience actually believe that this could be possible. While Yanin may not be Tony Jaa, she spent two years physically preparing for the role, and they spent two years filming it, using the same stunt teams as on Ong-bak andThe Protector, so you know that the action scenes will be unbelievably well done and as technically difficult as can be. In this regard, director Pinkaew does not disappoint. Featuring extreme scenes in a meat-processing plant and on a series of building ledges, among others, the acrobatics and martial arts displays of Chocolate are top notch.

The success of Ong-bak allowed Pinkaew to obtain larger budgets on his subsequent films, and it shows in the superior picture and colors of Chocolate. And the audio mix is quite strong as well, using the 5.1 Surround system well enough. But please, PLEASE, watch the film with its original Thai language track. The English dub is quite bad, although it is good for a few laughs. As for special features, the only one is a too-short (it’s less than 10 minutes!) making of that features clips of some of the fight sequences and how they prepared for them. These could have been fleshed out a bit; it would be great to see more about the training involved and the attention to details necessary to pull off such frenetic sequences. Pinkaew also talks about discovering Jeeja Yanin as she was auditioning for a role in Born to Fight.

Obviously geared toward fans of martial arts movies, Chocolate also tries to bridge the gap with a simple yet touching tale. Does it succeed? Not one hundred percent, but just watching Yanin do her thing, being all meek and quiet one moment only to burst forth with fury and rage when confronted with injustice is a treat to behold, kind of like Yoda in Attack of the Clones, which was the best part of that film, right? All kidding aside, if you’re into martial arts films, Chocolate is required viewing. The fight scenes are brutally beautiful, choreographed to perfection, and the story is a nice change of pace from what fans are used to.

Movie rating – 3

Disc Rating – 2.5