Born to Fight previews

I just caught the previews for Born to Fight, the new film by Ong-Bak action director Panna Rittikrai. I'm pumped. It stars various Thai national athletes. There's a young female muaythai star who looks pretty fierce. Even fiercer is a female taekwondo star. There's also a top tawkraw player. Tawkraw, for those who aren't aware of this Asian sport, is a combination of soccer and volleyball. It's played with a 9'' wicker ball, with the players kicking it back and forth over a net. So there's a few shots in the preview of the guy doing backflips as his feet kick pomelos (very large, deadly citrus fruits) out of trees and at the head of the bad guys.

The film opens in Thai theaters on August 5.

The Nation has also recently done an article on Panna and the new film. He talks about working with Ong-Bak star Tony Jaa. For seven years Panna had worked with Jaa to go past the obsolete kung fu moves and create a new style. And Ong Bak was exactly what he was waiting for.

"I cried when I watched Nang Nak being screened to a full house and dreamed that Ong Bak would do the same. When it came true I cried again,” Panna told The Nation.

With Jaa going on to hopefully greater fame (as well as an Ong-Bak sequel, Tom Yum Goong), the star of Born to Fight is a young fella named Choopong Changprung, who attended the same college as him and Jaa.

The story is about some Thai athletes who become caught up in a squabble on the border. They have to fight not just for themselves but for their country. Apart from Choopong, Panna cast champions like Olympic gold medallist boxer Somluck Kumsing, hotshot football player Piyapong Pew-on and Sepak Takraw striker Suebsak Pansueb; gymnast Amornthep Waewsang. There's also the female taekwando champion, a member of the national rugby team, a junior female Muay Thai champion and a 70-year-old martial arts guru.

The Bangkok Post's Kong Rithdee recently did some nice stories (sorry, link expired) on Panna.

A veteran stuntman, the 43-year-old Panna has been making B-movies for years.

"You've probably never heard of my movies," Panna told the Post. "They are popular among taxi drivers and som tam vendors and security guards and Isaan coolies. My loyalest fans are folk people in the far-out [villages], where they lay out mattresses on the ground and drink moonshine whisky while watching my outdoor movies."

Panna admitted that most of his movies are crap, made to scrape up just enough money to invest in the next one, in real indie filmmaking style.

"My inspirations, above all, were Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee," says Panna. "The James Bond movies also made me wonder how the stuntmen did what they did."

Born to Fight is actually a remake of his first film, made decades ago for around $12,000.

In one scene in the new film, two men, standing on the roofs of two speeding trucks, are fighting frantically when one of them falls. He lands on the ground as one of the trucks giant wheels rolls past his head, missing him by mere centimetres. No fear. No hesitation. No computer retouch. [This is in the preview and it looks dangerous as hell.]

"It's not violence I'm showing. It's amazement," he told the Post. "We'd rehearsed that scene for probably a year before we shot it. We calculated the guy's weight -- he couldn't be too big or too small. We projected how he'd bounce off the truck once he fell. We looked at every possibility. We knew we couldn't afford a single mistake.

The new film, he says "is totally different from Ong-Bak. "In Ong-Bak we show off the spectacular martial arts moves. In Kerd Ma Lui, it's all death-defying stunt works. This time I just went berserk and throw all the crazy stuff in!"

Born to Fight tells the story of a hodgepodge of national athletes who make a trip to donate money to a poor mountainous village. While there, a gang of villains strikes the villagers, and the bare-handed athletes are forced to use their athletic skills to combat the gun-wielding bad guys.

"My idea is that if we can train regular actors to do a stunt, why can't we use athletes, who already possess great athletic abilities, to do something even more exciting?" Panna told the Post. "Athletes represent the patriotic sentiments of the audience, and in this film, patriotism and harmony are the main themes."

Golden Network Asia, a sales agent representing Kerd Ma Lui, has reported strong interest from foreign distributors in the film due to Panna's reputation from Ong-Bak. With the frenzy of the upcoming Olympics, the director hopes that his movie about gifted athletes going on a fighting rampage would cash in on the wave.

"The action is raw, but with a bigger production I think I can take it to the next level," says Panna.