85%
78%
7%
Average Rating: 5.3/10
Reviews Counted: 65
Fresh: 31 | Rotten: 34
It suffers from comparisons to its predecessor -- not to mention Tony Jaa's less-than-nimble direction -- but Ong Bak 2 has all the extravagant violence and playful style that fans of the original will expect.
Average Rating: 4.4/10
Critic Reviews: 11
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 6
It suffers from comparisons to its predecessor -- not to mention Tony Jaa's less-than-nimble direction -- but Ong Bak 2 has all the extravagant violence and playful style that fans of the original will expect.
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Average Rating: 3.3/5
User Ratings: 20,191
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Muay Thai martial arts master Tony Jaa returns to deliver a bone-breaking barrage of knees and elbows in this action opus that finds the star not only delivering blows in front of the camera, but calling the shots behind it as well. Despite the title's indication of this film as a sequel to 2003's Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior, this movie has no narrative connection to the events of the earlier work, despite the fact that both films star Jaa. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
Oct 23, 2009 Wide
Feb 2, 2010
Magnolia Pictures
All Critics (65) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (31) | Rotten (34) | DVD (5)
Ong Bak 2 is really just an excuse for several jaw-dropping set pieces that show off Jaa's killing skills.
Jaa, who co-directs, has only one thing in mind: a series of increasingly complex fight scenes in his characteristically wide-ranging style. If movie theaters allowed you to fast-forward past the filler, your life just might be complete.
Bears virtually no connection to the original.
Taking co-directorial reins with Panna Rittikrai, Jaa has erected a portentous platform for his high-flying athleticism, bearing none of the freewheeling spirit or humor that made his feature debut a guiltless pleasure.
There isn't much of a plot, although Jaa's fans won't mind a bit. All they want is lots of bloody, muddy action in the Thai jungles, which they get.
Tony Jaa is a lot of fun to watch, but Ong Bak 2: The Beginning is not only a step back in time -- to 1431 -- but a step back in this martial artist's international film career.
A mix of martial arts, which includes Muay Thai, kung fu and Samurai swordplay, that was Jaa's inspiration for making the movie in the first place.
The 'sequel' to Jaa's stunning international debut, Ong-Bak, and his third international outing after the entertaining The Protector, but it contains only a fraction of the previous two's joyful invention.
... the lack of any dramatic center leaves the action, for all its bloody carnage and brutality, emotionally untethered: all spectacle and no character.
Delivers Jaa's most intense and impressive fighting action yet but a complex and underdeveloped plot and fractured, non-engaging direction leaves much to be desired.
We knew Jaa could bust heads; now he's just busting our balls.
Stretched to nearly two full hours and deploying a seemingly endless array of flashbacks sequences, it becomes almost impossible to follow for more than a few minutes at a time and Jaa's utterly charm-free performance doesn't make things any easier.
You can only get so mad at a movie in which a large crowd cheers and the lone subtitle reads "Hooray." With a period.
Lovely to look at by small degrees, but a mud-spattered mess of a movie overall.
It's an incoherent, would-be martial-arts epic with only a handful of action sequences in its favor.
The action bits make you feel like you've had pure adrenaline pumped into you, but the attention to artistic detail... is like something you'd expect from a Hollywood epic...
Moaning about the overlong, sloppily told story seems petty nitpicking when all I really want to see is Tony Jaa doing what he does best - beating the tar out of people, and we get that in spades in Ong Bak 2.
I could have enjoyed the film if it didn't present itself as some kind of self-important epic, which only makes the ridiculous dialogue and hackneyed plot stand out.
Boring and insipid are words I never planned on hearing myself say when describing a Tony Jaa film, but I guess there's a first for everything.
Features a far more soulful and charismatic Jaa immersed in a ceaseless whoosh of extraordinary fight scenes involving everything from pebbles to elephants.
What can I say about this sequel, its actually very good surprisingly, nice idea and well made. Lets just get this straight, this sequel has nothing to do with the original film a tall but its just as good if not a little better than the original film.This film is set in feudal Siam with a young boy (Jaa) being raised
January 18, 2012Super Reviewer
A brilliant and spectacular martial arts epic that totally blows you away. Tony Jaa tears up the screen once again in the leading role and behind the camera crafting a bold, ferocious and earth-shattering adventure. It's packed with some the most amazing and depth-defying action sequences ever put on film and has one
May 29, 2011Super Reviewer
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