Your Kung-Fu Is Strong!

Bruce Lee. Obviously, his expertise in the martial arts is legendary and needs no validation from me. If film did not exist during this man’s life, the world would have likely never known of Bruce Lee, the very embodiment of martial arts. His films were all about the power that could be derived from being a master of this most physical of arts. They were realistic in the portrayal of the movements (get kicked in the face and you are not likely to brush it off and keep fighting) and were some of the best proponents of the martial arts in the western world. Everyone who studies martial arts, I imagine, would like to be as good as him and I would dare say that action stars would like to have the same pull to their films that Lee had to his.

Jackie Chan does films that are comedic in nature, but he does his own stunts and that lends credibility to his skills and that is why I think he was close to being the next "Bruce Lee". Jet Li is more artsy with his fantastical moves and makes the viewer wish they could have kung-fu skills of story book proportions and that is why I think he has the pull to his films that Bruce Lee had. So, who’s next? Who will try to combine the realism and credibility of Jackie Chan and the power and awe of Jet Li? Who will come the closest to Bruce Lee since, well, Bruce Lee?

That’s really hard to say. However, there is this one guy… Phanom Yeerum, aka – Tony Jaa. Now, his film credits are rather limited right now, appearing only as a stunt double in “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation” for Robin Shou (Liu Kang) and James Remar (Lord Rayden). But he has a film, which, oddly enough, had action scenes used in interstitial runners at the Alamo Drafthouse for the last year or so. Anyway, this film is called Ong-Bak. I think this film came out in 2003 but I never saw it advertised in the States until now. It looks a little antiquated (film quality wise), but that could due to where and what budget was involved in the production. Could give it some flavor. At any rate, the film looks like it has raw martial arts talent and no gimmicks (wires, computer graphics, photography hoo-ha) to muddy the pure nature of the sport. Tony could be the next Bruce. Who knows. I’d like to see it all the same.

Elsewhere: Santa isn’t real?