MartialHorror reviews “Born to Fight“, a Thailand movie made in the wake of the acclaimed “Ong Bak“. Be sure to look at my website for the alternate script for this!

MY ORIGINAL WRITTEN REVIEW CAN BE FOUND HERE

I had to rush through this as my window had closed. For some reason, I could never get this video right even though I had been working on it for months.

Also read my written reviews for “Trail of Blood 2: The Fearless Avenger” (Ronin-Revenge!) and “Kickboxer” (Jean-Claude Van Damme!)

THE ORIGINAL SCRIPT: I re-wrote this because I kept having trouble with it.

“Born to Fight” was Panna Ritikrai’s (?) followup to the highly impressive Tony Jaa vehicle “Ong Bak” and while he didn’t rope Jaa into appearing in this one, he did get Dan Chupong…doing his best Tony Ja Impersonation. Chupong plays a young cop who joins his sister on a charity trip after his mentor is killed in action. What begins as a peaceful, productive day in the village turns into hell when terrorists arrive and take over. They demand that the Government release their leader- whom our protagonist captured at the beginning of the film. If you plan on enjoying “Born to Fight”, you have to accept that there is going to be a lot of bad melodrama. Quoting Diamanda Hagan, it seems to think it’s an Oliver Stone movie.

It’s bad because it’s heavyhanded and there are way too many characters, most of whom are devoid of personality, so it’s hard to tell who is who and even Chupong- who did actually turn out to be a much better actor than this- is pretty boring. So why am I doing a Kickass of Awesome episode on Born to Fight? Because holy turkey poo this is awesome! The stuntmen who participated in this film all deserve kisses. Whether they’re driving through some flaming structure or falling off of trucks ONTO OTHER TRUCKS before hitting the ground, everything they do is amazing. Born to Fight contains some of the best stuntwork I have ever seen.

The fights, when they happen, are really good too. Sure, they aren’t on par with Tony Jaa’s movies and the gimmicky Olympic-fu stuff is pretty silly, but the choreography is smooth and…at least it’s different. But while the fights are impressive, watch Born to Fight for its bone crunching, physics raping stunts. They alone redeem all of this movies problems. I’d give it a 7/10. Good. This has been an episode of kickass of awesome and Born to Fight is Kickass of Awesome, whatever the hell that means.