Raging Phoenix (2009)

Wonderfully offbeat film!

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

A Major Disappointment

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

How can I start?, well let me say: First I hate the voice of the main female character, horrible. Second, the fights look more than a Brazilian capoeira, not even closer to a real fight. Third, the plot is ridiculous. Fourth, please tell me how a woman with no more than 80 pounds, can resist brutal fight against strong men. Fifth and above all, please explain how can she catch with her tiny arms, two persons?I can continue all night, but as a summary, I wanted to like the movie, I personally love Asian films, Ong Bak trilogy, The Raid, the Protector, etc., but this movie is garbage, a complete waste of time.I didn't see Chocolate, but with this movie, and because of her awful voice (like a whistle), I will pass it.

Things aren't going well for Deu; while performing as a drummer see sees her boyfriend chatting to another girl she overreacts and loses both the boyfriend and her place in the band. It looks like things can't get much worse but then she is kidnapped by people who intend to sell her to the infamous Jaguar Gang. She is rescued by Sanim and soon meets his friends 'Dog' and 'Pig'. She learns that they each had loved ones taken by the gang and are tried to destroy the gang. She asks to be taught their strange martial art; Meyraiyuth… a skill which requires its user to be drunk! After training, they go up against the Jaguar Gang; things don't go quite as planned and they will be in a lot of danger as they search out the gang's fearsome leader.This film is a bit of an odd one; it is sold as an action movie with emphasis on the fact that it is JeeJa Yanin's second film after the bone-crunching 'Chocolate' but much of this seems far more comic. The fighting seems more like stylised dance moves; impressively choreographed but for the most part lacking the impact one might expect. The story itself is fairly silly; the gang are kidnapping select people to extract their pheromones to make expensive perfume and the final scenes take place in what appears to be a bottomless pit with criss-crossing rope bridges that seem to serve no purpose other than to provide a nice setting for a multilevel fight! The cast do a decent enough job and if you can laugh at the silliness it is quite fun but nowhere near as memorable as 'Chocolate'.These comments are based on watching the film in Thai with English subtitles.

This is the first movie that has JeeJa Yanin as the leading role. I know she first hit a bit of fame with the movie "Chocolate"(2008) which shows off her martial arts stunt work. And I was actually quite impressed with her physical abilities in this one. Which sorta made me want to check out her previous movie and the ones that came after this one. As a matter of fact JeeJa and the guy that played Sanim spent over 4 yrs training for this movie. Which is quite a lot of dedication. And just about everyone in this flick pulled off there own stunts without relying much on wire works. I actually watched this movie with English dub which is just terrible but I actually found it to add comedic value to this flick. And the acting is pretty bad, but again that isn't the main focus for these types of movies. Which is fine because this one has quite a bit of creative and entertaining fight sequences. Which is composed of some muy thai break dancing fighting style and a bit of drunken boxing. Yeah, some of these fight scenes are far from being believable but it's still entertaining to watch. My main gripe with this flick though is that the cinematography isn't all that good. You can see everything that is going on without all that choppy fight sequence stuff in modern day action movies. But a bit of a better cinematography for the fight sequences would have added a lot of value to this one. The story is also laughable and I wouldn't be shocked if they got some of the ideas from the movie "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer". So yeah although the plot is not that well written and can come off laughable, I didn't find it irritating to watch. And the story blended in with the action decently. And was still entertained with this movie just about all the way through. I can see quite a bit of effort was put into this action flick, well at least with the resources they had and it was worth it.7.4/10

Wow, all of that credit that female lead JeeJa Yanin built up with the enjoyable CHOCOLATE (2008) is blown away in one quick yank of a wire harness. Seriously, one of the things that has made the recent explosion of Thai action cinema enjoyable is that 99% of the time the actors were doing these flips and kicks for real. It was refreshing after Hong Kong had - for the most part - retreated into the wacky world of wire work in the 1990s. So it truly saddened me to see JeeJa, who did some amazing stuff in CHOCOLATE, look like a floating fairy as wires help her achieve some ridiculous looking stunts, especially during the final fights. I was hoping for more realism along the lines of Tony Jaa's "No harness, no wires!" motto.