Dynamite Warrior
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   188 of 368 readers found this review helpful.

Okay, where to start with this mess….This is another Thai export that people irrelevantly compare to Ong-Bak. Unlike Ong-Bak, this movie just didn’t have the fine polish. Nevertheless, it wasn’t a bad movie per say, it just had some…err..issues.

First off, this movie was entirely overdubbed. And it was overdubbed very poorly. Think about all the stand up comedians you have seen in your life who make fun of overdubbing. This was worse. I would have preferred to just hear it in the original language with subtitles. But what are you going to do?

The plot is absurd, yet somewhat fun. It takes us back to the early 1900’s. You see, like much in life, this is all about the tractor industry. A fancy pants businessman wants to start selling tractors in Thailand. However, most people don’t think it’s worth it, when for the same price they can buy ten heads of oxen. What can fancy pants do about this? Why hire bandits to attack the oxen ranchers and steal their oxen of course.

However, he does not take into account that some people won’t be happy with this course of action. Enter the Dynamite Warrior. For some reason he is not down with the horseplay, and wants to stop ole fancy pants. He begins to attack and steal from the bandits. He of course gives all the oxen back to the villagers much like an Asian Robin Hood.

But why would Dynamite Warrior even get involved? Well there’s nothing like a cliché to answer that question. He of course wants to attack the bandits because the head bandit once killed his mom, or dad, or both. Does it really matter? Yes, we find our hero is not as selfless as he makes himself out to be, and he’s really doing it for his own reasons.

The action is this movie is laughable. Dynamite Warrior is called such because he uses dynamite and rockets to fight. In the opening fight scene he launches several missiles at the bandits. Now remember, this is the early 1900’s, yet this Hero has technology not even major governments have yet. The funniest part may be his mode of transportation. He likes attaching rope to his rockets and he rides them like a surfboard. I can’t say I have ever seen somebody ride a rocket on the outside before.

At least when our hero isn’t riding rockets, his martial arts skills are more then adequate. He really does do some amazing stuff of his own accord. Things like diving through a burning barrel, or just flat out taking on six guys at once. However, this martial art technique is short lived. At a certain point this movie suddenly turned into Mortal Kombat, and all the characters started using “powers”. The main bad guy starts throwing stuff with his mind, some other guy shoots lightning out of his ass, etc. It really comes off as contrived.

This movie was billed as action/comedy. I didn’t really see any comedic elements. Unless the overdubbing was done on purpose to get a laugh, but it failed in that respect. This really wasn’t a terrible movie. But it could’ve been tightened up tremendously. Less CGI, more live action. I don’t think it was a complete waste of time. It’s always fun to see what other countries are producing these days. But this could really go either way. If you are a fan of Asian films then you’ll probably get some entertainment out of this. If you tend to stick to mainstream Hollywood, then you won’t want to touch this. I would recommend you at least give it a look though, broadening your horizons is never a bad thing.

Added:  Saturday, August 04, 2007

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