Jija Yanin

The bright light on the otherwise dour martial arts film scene has been Thai filmmaker Prachya Pinkaew and his stellar collaborations with fellow Thai Tony Jaa in such films as Ong Bak and Tom Yum Goong.

But Tony Jaa let his fame travel straight to his ego, and decided to self-direct Ong Bak 2, a sequel apparently set hundreds of years before the events depicted in Ong Bak, and having in common none of the characters from the original.


As martial arts film historian Rick Meyers said at the San Diego Comic Con this year, (and I'm paraphrasing) "it's like Jaa traveled into the jungle with a film crew and stuntmen and emerged two years later with a terrible film featuring spectacular martial arts fight scenes."

Ong Bak 2 proved that the real talent behind Jaa's first two international megahits was the man behind the camera, Prachya Pinkaew. Proving to have an eye for exceptional talent, Pinkaew released Chocolate (no relation to the Johnny Depp outing) a rip roaring martial arts film about an autistic girl with extraordinary martial arts aptitude fighting mobsters. This film debuted Yanin Vismitananda, who, after several tries at some sort of westernization or shortening of her name, has seemed to settle on Jija Yanin.


Her rare beauty, graceful and explosive martial arts, (part dance, part Bruce Lee inspired kung fu, and a whole lot of acrobatic Muay Thai) combined with a willingness to really commit to both the melodramatic Rain Man-esque and unabashed exploitative aspects of her autistic character made her performance a genre busting original. Her action scenes confirmed her as the next great female action star.

As a director Prachya Pinkaew is painfully slow. His action films, carefully constructed works of genre artistry, are each perfect little gems, and such quality takes time. But a star of Jija Yanin's youth, talent and beauty needs to be capitalized on quickly. Thankfully, Pinkaew is also a producer, so Raging Phoenix, Jija's sophomore effort, has come in just under two years after Chocolate, and though it lacks the emotional punch of her first film, it's still a solid, kick ass martial arts film.

Rashane Limtrakul, the editor on Ong Bak, directs. This time Jija combines Muay Thai boxing with drunken style kung fu, break dancing, and a little parkour (French style free running as in the District B-13 movies.) The plot is weird, concerning evil villains kidnapping women who are drugged and tortured so that their tears can be harvested as medicine for rich scumbags. But of course, the plot matters only as a vehicle for some impressive martial arts, and here Jija doesn't disappoint (though the wire work is sometimes too obvious.)

Raging Phoenix is a perfect second film. It allows Jija to act for the first time as a relatively "normal" girl (though by the end you can see her battle through the pain into a kind of frenzied fighting insanity) and it allows her to really act through a full spectrum of emotions, not muted by the autism of her character in Chocolate.

I guess we'll have to wait two more years for Jija's next film, in which she'll be teaming up once more with genius Prachya Pinkaew on an untitled project reportedly featuring American martial arts star Marrese Crump.

Does this mean that Pinkaew's film with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Robin Shou is on hold, or is he going to start to up his output? (Hopefully without threatening his quality.)

Unfortunately the best we can hope for theatrically is a limited Magnet release for Raging Phoenix, and a Magnolia DVD sometime next fall. Overseas DVDs have started popping up, probably high quality bootlegs but maybe not, have been turning up for order on line. The film is worth tracking down, if for nothing else than to see the next great female action star.