Fireball

As with any genre, martial arts films have good ones and bad ones, and a fair share in the “so-bad-it’s-good” category. They also, like any genre, tend to become formulaic, where the story is mostly inconsequential to the action, but let’s face it; most people don’t watch martial arts films for the story. For a while we started seeing big-budget epics, such as CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, that put more emphasis on the story and production values, whilst turning the kung-fu into wire-fu with totally unbelievable moves. Then out of Thailand came a new hero who performed extraordinary feats without wires or CGI. Tony Jaa took the genre back to basics with his film ONG BAK. The plot was a basic quest story, but it was the martial arts that captured everyone’s imagination. It was like seeing Bruce Lee for the first time, but instead of kung fu it was Muay Thai, it was athletic, beautiful and totally brutal. It looked convincingly real because it was. Unfortunately, his follow-up films haven’t had the same impact. The sequel was more of the same but set in Australia, with a stolen elephant, and the prequel ONG BAK 2 left audiences divided. However, it put Thai martial arts films on the international map, which is where FIREBALL comes from.

The problem with this film is it has tried to be clever and appeal to an audience brought up on MTV and extreme sports TV and Nike ads, which is clearly shown by the fact that one of the film’s “sponsors” is Red Bull. The story is reminiscent of early Van Damme films, where the hero enters a competition to avenge his hospitalised brother, but instead of it being a straightforward martial arts competition the filmmakers have invented a hybrid sport that is basketball with kickboxing, which basically involves kicking the shit out of the other team until someone scores a goal, or there is only one person standing. It’s an interesting idea that gives the film a gritty urban edge to it, but it is shot in a frenetic MTV style with low light, lots of jiggly handheld camera and fast, crash-cut edits, so that in the end you don’t really see what is going on. That technique worked in the fight sequences in the Bourne films, but those sequences were few and far between and were not the main purpose of the film. When I watch a martial arts film I want to see the action in detail, especially if they are skilled proponents, which the guys in FIREBALL clearly are. That is one of the things that made ONG BAK so watchable, was seeing Jaa’s moves in all their bone-crunching detail, and with slo-mo action replays of the more spectacular ones.

FIREBALL isn’t a bad movie, despite the predictable, clichéd story, but for my taste the shooting and editing was too hyperactive without adding anything to it, but if you like mindless onscreen violence as entertainment then you won’t be disappointed.

FIREBALL is out now in cinemas on limited release and on DVD from 18 January through E1 Entertainment and available to order from Play.

www.fireballmovie.com