Plugging into Power Kids

Produced by Prachya Pinkaew and directed by Krissanapong Rachata, Power Kids (5 หัวใจฮีโร่ or Haa huajai heeroh, literally "five heart heroes") has been in the works for a couple of around four years, and follows a couple of other kids-in-action films from Sahamongkol, the pirate flick Salad Ta Diaw (Pirate of the Lost Sea) and Somtum, which starred Nathan Jones.

The cast of Power Kids includes "Grace" Narawan Techaratanaprasert and girlfighter Sasisa Jindamanee from Somtum. Young Sasisa made her debut in stunt maestro Panna Rittikrai's very violent Born to Fight, and so she's been trained from an early age in the art of being thrown around and landing a flying double-knee kick into the chest of a stuntman.

And if those kneecaps don't crush your chest, her killer dimples will swallow you whole.

There's also young male fighter, Nantawooti Boonrapsap, and Paytaai Wongkamlao -- son of Petchtai "Mum Jokmok" Wongkamlao, and another female fighter, Pimchanok Leuwisetpaiboon.

And yes, that's Tom Yum Goong and The Rebel star Johnny Nguyen on the poster there, but according to a report by Todd Brown on TwitchFilm.net, for overseas sales, Sahamongkol is playing down Nguyen's involvement in Power Kids because they want to focus on the young stars.

Todd has seen a promo reel at the European Film Market. Here's what he has to say:

Any fear that the level of action would be lower because of the age of the performers is completely unfounded. This thing is going to have child welfare activists in a tizzy. The double flying knee -- one of the young stars drives a knee into the side of a villain’s head, pushing him into another flying knee from another of the stars coming in the other direction -- and the closing shot of one of the kids smashing face first through a pane of glass were particular favorites.

Power Kids will be released on Thai cinemas on March 5.

Meanwhile, Somtum has just been reviewed by Nekoneko. Head on over to find out what she has to say about it.

Update: Conan Stevens (the other 7-foot-tall guy in Somtum) comments: "Finally it is coming out, over four years after we filmed in the movie. In fact, this is the movie that got me to move to Thailand in the first place." He has more on his blog. And now Twitch has a follow-up posting, including a trailer (embedded below).

Update 2: Deknang has a page and a Popcorn forum string.