Ong Bak (DVD)

No stunt doubles, no computer images, no strings attached! When the head of a statue sacred to a village is stolen, a dutiful but endearingly naive young martial artist is charged to go to the big city and finds himself taking on the underworld to retrieve it... Having drawn incredible comparisons to Bruce Lee and an early Jackie Chan, Thai sensation, Tony Jaa, bursts onto the scene! Amazingly athletic, not to mention charismatic, Tony Jaa refuses to countenance the use of props (yes, that's real glass, barbed wire and metal spikes!), wire enhancement and faked blows. What full contact you see is most definitely what you get! Added to this is a gleefully choreographed chase on the highways of Bangkok involving a fleet of tuk-tuk vehicles (the three-wheeled taxi iconic to Thailand), knowing location photography (visitors to the capital will recognise Khao San Road and the exterior of top nightclub hangout Suzy's Pub) and, most of all, an affecting story of one man's struggle to uphold village traditions against Western modernisation.