Dynamite Warrior (2006)
Directed by Chalerm Wongpim
I’m not completely adverse to asian martial arts movies, but I must admit that some of them have a strange mix of silliness, love story, violence and other things woven into the mix that makes them at times not easy to appreciate. The silliness erodes the mostly serious fighting elements, the love story most of the time feels hackneyed to the 9th degree. Now imagine that this movie also is a western, where the heroes and villains, instead of using guns, deploy Muay Thai and sorcery. The main plot is that one of the evil guys tries to steal all buffaloes, since nobody is buying his new, modern trucks (it takes place in 1890 in Thailand). There’s also a black sorcerer who is the main enemy of one of the buffalo cowboys and a freedom fighter who brings buffaloes to the poor and tries to find the murderer of his parents.
While all of this sounds rather bonkers, it could have been fun. Sadly, most of the fights scenes look rather generic and lack a good dynamic. Worse is the inept acting. I don’t expect drama level acting in a martial arts movie, but a certain level of actual acting would be nice. Nothing like that can be found here. Not very exciting and lacking in all areas, the time could be better spend watching other movies.
Rating: 1/5
