|
|
|
|
In Bangkok's underworld a beautiful woman finds herself torn between two men, a local
mob boss and a representative of the Japanese Yakuza. Needless to say things do not
end well with a nasty breakup involving somebody literally shooting themselves in the
foot. Flash forward a year and the loser in this triangle turns up to inflict some foot
oriented revenge of his own, in front of the woman's infant daughter.
Flash forward another dozen years and the woman is ill and living in poverty. Her
daughter is autistic but with lightening fast reflexes. And she's become a fighting
phenomena from watching martial arts movies over and over. So when she finds a list
of businessmen who owe her mother money from her loan sharking days, she has the
bright idea of collecting these debts. This quickly turns violent...
This brings the attention of the local mob, now led by guess who? This leads to the
inevitable showdown with both of the men from her mother's past drawn into the fray
along with an endless supply of henchmen to be beaten and sliced up with swords....
|
| |
|
|
The film is pretty well shot with one or two flashes of inspiration, including a scene at
an open air meat market which makes nice use of colored lights. Apart from that it's
all adequately done, but nothing really special.
|
| |
|
|
Again, the sound is what you would expect from a professionally shot film, but nothing
much beyond that. The Dolby 5.1 mix is nice I just wish they had done something with
it.
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
The disc is very weak on extras, with a 10 minute “Making Of” piece being the
highlight, and it's not all that. Apart from that there's a stills gallery and a collection of
trailers for releases from Madman's Eastern Eye label including the film itself.
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
Chocolate was directed by Prachya Pinkaew who also directed the astounding Ong
Bak, and this had been hyped as a female equivalent. Unfortunately it falls quite short
of that mark. The fight scenes are certainly impressive enough, (give or take some
obvious wire work and speeded up camera shots), but everything else is weak.
The plot is far fetched even for a martial arts film, it never even comes close to being
believable, even as an excuse for the fight scenes. Right from the first few minutes
when the love triangle falls apart, how it didn't end with the woman and the other
man dead is beyond ridiculous and the plot gets less believable from there.
The characters are another major problem. The mother, Zin, is a loan shark when the
film begins and is seen having various shop keepers, etc beaten when they can't pay
her back. This makes it very hard to give a damn about her later in the film. And
making Zen autistic must have seemed like a novel twist to the film makers, but in
practice it's just insanely annoying. And her fight scene with a drooling, twitching
spastic black belt is in the not funny kind of bad taste.
So, if all you want is some good ass kicking, Chocolate should kill the time nicely for
you. If, on the other hand you need anything resembling a plot or characters, you may
want to wait for Ong Bak 2.
|
|
