Chocolate (2009)

Chocolate went from a Asian gangster version of Westside Story to Ong Bak with a female lead in less than 30 minutes. What this means is that if you are a fan of the knee to the back of the neck, roundhouse to the throat, stunt action of Tony Jaa then this movie should be in your collection.

With laughably bad acting and a script that makes you turn an eyebrow up, you will probably wonder why this movie got such a decent score from me at first glance. But when it comes to Zen throwing down against the bad guys, you will quickly forget the acting and script and tout this movie as a masterpiece in stunt and action sequences.
 
Zen (Jeeja Yanin) is a girl born autistic to Masashi (Hiroshi Abe) and Zin (Ammara Siripong). The rivalry between her mother’s family and her father’s gang has left her mother sick and maimed to the point where she is unable to collect the many debts owed to her around town. Due to Zen’s social disability and her mother’s sickness, Mangmoom (Taphon Phopwandee) is forced to help raise her and soon realizes that Zen has a special reflex talent that makes her quicker than the average human being.

When Zin’s illness bypasses the family’s finances, Zen and Mangmoom are forced to hustle money on the streets in order to get her some help. This becomes futile as Zin’s illness gets worse and soont he duo are forced to collect the debt from the men who owe it to their mother… the only problem is they aren’t willing to part with it easily. This leads to Zen unleashing her talent of martial arts to take back mom’s money and eventually settling old rivalries.

This movie was hard to take initially even with the beautiful poetry that described Masashi’s love for imperfection. Had they stuck with this poetic theme throughout I would probably consider this film a nice package but to be honest with you the action is really the only reason to watch Chocolate. The name has nothing to do with the plot, the plot is haphazard at best with confusing transexual bad guys and direction that went all over the place.

The one positive thing that Chocolate does have however is real stunts performed by Jeeja Yanin and the brave men who she kicked and punched into oblivion. Very much like Ong Bak or Tom yum goong, you will forget the bad plot as soon as the action starts and will find yourself rewinding quite a bit as you wonder “did she really just do that?”

This is a film for action buffs and martial arts enthusiasts but the serious film homer should stay far away. Just be warned that the initial 30 minutes would do better to be forwarded for maximum enjoyability.