This serving of Thailand action has a cool style to it and once again shows off the awesome skills of Yanin Jeeja, the female martial arts actor from Chocolate!
Jeeja played Deu, a young girl in Thailand with some attitude. She’s in a metal band and during one of their perfomances finds her boyfriend with another woman, so she goes nuts and attacks him before being dragged off.
Afterwards she prays to her deceased father, dealing with an absent mother she hits the booze and gets nice and wasted. It is then that some men come out of nowhere and try to kidnap her but she is rescued by a man named Sanim (played by Kazu Patrick Tang).
She wakes up form the ordeal in a building with three men, Sanim and his friends Kee Moo / Pig Shit and Kee Ma (Dog Shit). Pig Shit and Dog shit are also brothers. Deu witnesses an attack on the three men and watches them take apart the group almost effortlessly – despite being totally drunk!
She then learns of their martial arts style and pushes to be taught. Eventually she is taught by the three before they must continue to fight against a powerful gang, who manufacture a ‘sex addiction’ perfume (apparently when smelt the person smelling it becomes addicted to sex) by extracting something form a rare Pheromone found in certain women.
Naturally Deu has this rare Pheromone, but also Sanim’s wife – who has been held by them for some time. Naturally they all work together to destroy this gang and rescue Sanim’s wife.
Different…
Straight away – ‘Sex addiction perfume’. Criminals have all sorts of weapons against their targets these days! On top of that the gang that Deu joins are also masters of a (fictional) martial art called Meyraiyuth.
Meyraiyuth is a mix of Muay Thai & Break Dancing (reminds me of Capeoira) that is most effective when drunk. More than that, the skill level attained by each person practicing it is heavily influenced by misery and pain (bit saddist!). So the whole group (Sanim, Deu, Pig Shit & Dog Shit) are essentially all miserable people who channel their art with alochol to become highly effective fighters.
Crazy Stuff right? Did I mention that there was a hidden fourth member of the gang named ‘Bullshit’?
I wouldn’t take this too seriously though, as it does create an awesome visual style to their fights and the film in general.
The movie itself isn’t exactly ‘deep’ but this visual style and the characteristics of the main group are pretty fun to watch. But it would be nothing without the fight sequences.
The Action & Martial Arts
The action, right from the beginning of the film, has an awesome flow and style. As I mentioned before, it’s a mix of Drunken Boxing, Muay Thai and Break-Dancing in a Capoeira style blend of fighting movements.
On top of that the use of more than one person is done well also, with some of the gang picking up and swinging each other into movements – once again, almost like a ‘violent dance’.
Of course being a movie with Yanin Jeeja and the crew from Thailand, the action standard is very high and the movements and stunts carry that high level. While it’s no ‘Ong Bak‘ or ‘Chocolate‘ or it has a lot of the same qualities, but suffers a little overuse of CGI toward the end of the film – although mainly in the background it just distracts a little bit as it doesn’t seem to blend naturally.
Ultimately, it’s a fun film filled with some cool visually stylish action, I highly recommend it to any martial arts movie fan!
On Blu Ray –
Region A (US & Canada)
Raging Phoenix [Blu-ray]
Region B (UK, Australia, New Zealand, Europe etc)
Raging Phoenix [Blu-ray] [2009]
On DVD –
Region 1 (US & Canada)
Raging Phoenix
Region 2 (UK, Europe, etc)
Raging Phoenix [DVD] [2009]
Region 4 (Australia, New Zealand, etc)
Raging Phoenix
This is one of my favourite movies l love to watch. Could l get other episodes as well?Thanks.