The Kick User Reviews

The Kick (2011) directed by Prachya Pinkaew

Brought to you by the team of director Prachya Pinkaew and his action choreographer Panna Rittikrai, 'The Kick' is another in an ever increasing stretch of bad films from the duo that once brought us highly entertaining martial arts fair such as 'Ong Bak' and 'Chocolate'. To be fair I didn't have much hope as going in I knew it was a comedy martial arts film and frankly those rarely fare well...but hey, Stephen Chow's done it twice and there are some funny old Shaw Bros. films so I launched into it with some small amount of hope.

Sadly there's really nothing here to recommend.

The Comedy is awful and never fails to fall flat, the story is simply routine with just some terribly stupid subplots, and worst of all the characters are all terribly shrill, horribly dressed, and difficult to endure much less generate any empathy. As amazing as this sounds, ALL of this could be forgiven if the martial arts are good as many fans of the genre know some of the worst films ('Wheels on Meals' anyone?) sometimes contain some of the best fights. Unfortunately that's not the case here as the fighting is not only slow as mud and stiff as all hell, other than a few tiny moments at the very end it would be difficult to mine anything out of here as a highlight move much less a whole fight. Pretty much anything that looks interesting is in that trailer and let me fully warn you there's nothing else of interest in the entire film.

I'm not sure how this train wreck came about getting assembled in such a manner, but some quick reading led me to discover there are currently some popular Korean comedy cooking shows that are popular in Thailand and as this is a Thai/Korean joint production the film might solely exist to cash in on this popular trend in Thailand and nothing else. As always it's sad to see Pinkaew's post Tony-Jaa's-gone-all-crazy protege Jeeja inserted into yet another craptacular film since her solid debut in 'Chocolate'. Despite her front and center presence in the advertising for this film, she contributes little and even when she's there she demonstrates little of her high level of skill. Bad film makes me all sleepy now. You should probably get some too.