This post was written by Ashley Hazlewood, who is helping me cover the vast amount of ground at SXSW Film.
Ong Bak 2 is a magnificent disaster. Director/star Tony Jaa's on-set breakdown was extremely well-reported in East Asia. They shut down production and weren't certain the movie would be completed. After the Thai studio conceded to some of his demands, he returned to the film, but based on the ending, I don't know how much additional shooting was actually done.
I can't recommend the film as a cohesive, intellectually-satisfying movie, but that isn't the reason anyone goes to a martial arts film. The original Ong Bak (same star, different director, different universe) set everyone's expectations impossibly high for whatever came after, and as a direct result of that, we have a film that tries too hard and only succeeds in parts. At the same time, those who do not have a "seen one, seen them all" opinion of the genre will enjoy the stew enough to see it and Ong Bak 3, which is currently shooting.
Ong Bak 2 reuses the same two or three templates you usually see employed in these films. The story begins with Tien, an "Heir to a Throne", on the run from traitors who are trying to kill him. He ends up in a slave camp, full of snarling, bellowing "Evil Slavedrivers". One short "Destined Emancipation" later, he joins a group of "Honorable Thieves".
For good measure, they throw in every staple they can to garnish the fighting sequences. the hero avenges his family's murder by learning to become a "Fearsome Warrior". Insert a couple betrayals of trust/honor and bad guys in ridiculous costumes, and there's your garden variety martial arts flick. It's like MadLibs in Thai with lots of punching and kicking.
Cartoonish antagonists juxtaposed with the severely earnest Jaa and a few others in the film are the oil and water of different styles of martial arts "justice" films. It never really gels, but if you're really after killer fight choreography, just wait an hour.
It feels like Jaa was trying to make three movies at once, and in doing so, create the greatest action film ever. They re-use five to ten minutes of footage from the beginning verbatim late in the film, evidence of the need to pad out the runtime.
The most engaging, entertaining part for the audience seemed to be the Thai preshow advertisements that were stuck on the print. Less amusing was the Thai version of antipiracy coding, where you saw a very crudely scratched-in "E116" roughly every fifteen minutes.
If you are a devoted fan of Tony Jaa or brutally violent Thai movies, you really should see this, if only to talk to your friends about how out-of-nowhere the ending is, or how ridiculous bad guys with woven baskets on their heads are. If waiting until DVD, buy a twelve pack of Singha beer and wake people up when the action starts.