So I took Nat‘s suggestion and watched Born to Fight, a lovely movie about a militaristic drug gang that takes a small rural village hostage in order to force the release of their leader from prison. And they have a nuclear missle programmed to blow up Bangkok! A policeman decides to tag along with a group of athletes who visit the villiage on a charity mission, and they all fight back after being taken hostage.

Interesting things I have learned from this movie:

1) Rural Thai villages seem to have a lot of structures that can serve as gymnastics equipment.
2) Old men and schoolgirls both know the fundamentals of kickboxing.
3) A couple of guys with soccer balls can subdue evil guys with machine guns and grenades.

The last 50 minutes of the movie is non-stop action. The stunts were great, the director of the movie also worked on Ong Bak. I’m finding watching a movie like this much more fun than watching a typical overproduced Hollywood action movie. When watching a mainstream action movie my reaction is usually to note with approval the combination of stunt work and cgi, but when watching Born to Fight I kept thinking “Ouch!”and “That’s gotta hurt!” It just seems so much more authentic, and I hope that the Thai stuntmen have medical insurance, because I’m sure they needed it after working on this movie.