Skin Trade PosterLet’s face it, Tony Jaa has been in some of the best martial arts movies of all time but his last few films (Ong Bak 3, Protector 2 especially) were a major slide in quality.

They dropped the ball there unfortunately.

But earlier this year I sat down to watch Fast & Furious 7, which Jaa played a supporting role in and the with the few quick flashes we saw it seemed like he was back to his exciting self. Jaa was pulling some rad moves, slipping around, over and under his environment like the crazily, athletic and acrobatic freak which made him one of the very top martial arts icons of cinema.

I walked out wondering, “is he back?”

There’s 2 major tests that will tell us for sure: the future release of SPL 2 with Wu Jing and the US film ‘Skin Trade’, recently released and recently watched by myself 😉

So I want to explore the question – is Tony Jaa back?  Is Skin Trade what we all hoped it would be?

Tony Jaa in action

First, a little on the movie itself…

Well it centers around the theme of the illegal Sex Trade business which victimizes an approximate 20 to 30 million young girls (and boys) into prostituion. The type of thing that lends itself to idea of going on a brutal rampage and killing the rotten bastards who do it – thinking about the movie Taken right now.

This time our primary lead, Dolph Lundgren, kills the son of a crime boss who traffics girls in the the skin trade.  This results in the crime boss killing his wife and daughter. So Dolph wakes up in hospital, pissed and follows the guy to Thailand to kill him and anyone connected to his organisation.

While there (the second lead) Tony Jaa’s character ‘Tony’ and Michael Jai White’s character Reed go after him to arrest him (because the whole ‘vigilante’ thing is quite illegal).

So chases, fights, guns, kicks punches you get the idea.  

Jaa vs Michael Jai White

Is the film any good?

This movie was awesome and I liked it. I’m not gonna beat around the bush.

You got Dolph Lungren, a cool guy known for his involvement in some of the US’ best action films, plus he’s a highly experience martial artist.

Tony Jaa and Michael Jai White?  Some of the industry’s current very top guys.

The ingredients are there, the plot lends itself to mindless violence (the way we like it) and then it’s all mixed together, easy to follow and all 3 guys bring their charisma and slick fighting abilities to the screen.

On top of that we get a couple of nice surprises and each of these guys shows off their talents in a mix of gun fights, martial arts and good old fashioned chases – not to mention blatantly beating the piss out of of real scum bags.

Vigilante justice! No depth, just awesome action and a bit of statement against the sick bastards behind the whole sex trade.

Tony Jaa vs Dolph Lundgren

My conclusion?  Tony Jaa is back, but…

…he’s not quite back to full form like his Ong Bak and Protector days but he is getting there!

The potential is there and they’ve got the right talents supporting him again.  But what’s also cool is that Jaa is now becoming less monotonous in the characters he plays.

The days of relying on Jaa playing the ‘bumbling villager with awesome Muay Thai skills’ are gone, and he’s expanding.  He played a pretty bad ass villain in Fast & Furious 7, he plays a good tough guy cop in Skin Traffic so we just have to see how continues to grow.

In this film he gets to step up and show his stuff by drawing on his broad range of acrobatic stunts, free running and of course Muay Thai on all of his opponents whilst also being no stranger to a gun or two.

What’s the best part though? We see Jaa fight both Lundgren and Jai White.  Matches made in Martial Arts heaven!

The mixture of styles is quite cool.  Tony plays up his small fast guy style against their slower, big guy styles. This is embodied perfectly in the fight between Jaa and Michael Jai White.

Micheal Jai White proves to be able to match Tony’s skills with good understanding of stand up and body mechanics.  So Jaa then turns to using his environment a little more in an attempt to out maneuver him, and set him up for a fall. Meanwhile Jai White’s character relies on pure power, kicking and destroying the environment around him to get to Jaa’s character.

It’s awesome David vs Goliath stuff where Jaa is forced to out think and out maneuver the powerful, large stature of MJW. This film has proved to us there’s a bright future forming to fix up the ‘stumbling blocks’ of one of cinema’s greatest martial artists.

So he’s back, what’s next?

There’s rumors of The Raid 3 (hells yeah!) and the second Lundgren/Jaa film ‘A Man will Rise’, but the real film to anticipate for Tony Jaa is SPL 2.

SPL (aka Kill zone) was one of the best martial arts film to be made in Hong Kong in the last few decades. The action was viciously paced and had some top talent – Donnie Yen, Sammo Hung and Jacky Wu Jing.

This time we have similar people behind the film with the impressive Wu Jing returning and Tony Jaa stepping in too.  This film will have some wicked potential to be a BIG heavy hitter for Tony Jaa.  So I can’t wait.

What did you think?

Did you see Skin Trade? I thought it was a solid film but what do you think?  Did you enjoy it? Is Tony Jaa back or were you always confident he’d be back to form? Leave a comment below!

As always, thanks for reading my public rambling 🙂

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