Prachya Pinkaew’s Chocolate

The whole Crouching Tiger Art-Fu thing was cool for a while, but when it comes down to it, it’s kind of stupid that people are flying. I also don’t care about character development or cheesy love stories. If I’m watching a martial arts film, I just want to see a lot of people get their asses kicked. Prachya Pinkaew knows what I want.

Prachya Pinkaew may not be a household name in North America but he’s kind of a big deal in Thailand. He’s a writer/director/producer best known for Ong Bak and The Protector, two of the craziest martial arts movies you’ll ever see, starring Tony Jaa, the most ridiculously awesome martial arts star of all time. In Prachya’s films, there are no wires used and all the actors do their own stunts. It’s probably best to sum up these films with the oft-repeated thought that goes through your head while watching them: “Holy shit that looked dangerous.” With his latest offering, Chocolate, a different thought will be going through your head: “Holy shit that looked dangerous… that poor teenage girl.”

The idea for Chocolate was born when a then-teenage Ammara Siripong auditioned for a part in The Protector and dazzled Prachya. “It took three to four years to train her for the role. So while we were training her we were thinking and crafting the script. Also, to do that we looked at her personality and that she seems way younger than her actual age. She’s very bright and very positive and very petite. In order to make her fights with grown men look interesting, we had to give her some special characteristics,” he explains with a grin.

The special characteristics are Ammara’s character Zen’s has autism and superhuman reflexes. When her ex-Yakuza mother develops cancer and can’t pay the bills, Zen goes on a rampage to collect money owed to her family. But how is a teenage girl with autism going to collect debts from dangerous criminal syndicates? Through watching television and playing video games of course. By watching Tony Jaa and Bruce Lee films, she learns to master Muay-Thai, the national sport of Thailand—a martial art that sets itself apart from others due to its heavy emphasis on kneeing and elbowing people in the head. The story is heartwarming, the choreography in the fight scenes is mindblowing and the knees to the head look painful.

Chocolate culminates with an especially dangerous looking fight scene on the ledges of a four-storey building (remember, no wires). This begs the question: Why are you trying to kill your actors? “Learning from Ong Bak and The Protector, people give a lot of value to the fact that we put a lot of effort into making it real. It’s a unique aspect of my work. We’ve seen many other movies where girls fought before; what differentiates us is that we don’t use stuntmen. Hollywood movies use a lot of technology so it’s of the highest safety. The audience can figure out it’s not real. In order for us to compete we take a different approach. It’s the only way we can compete.”

Injuries are commonplace on sets but Prachya says they were only minor to medium in Chocolate. Keep in mind, Prachya has a far different definition of a what a “medium injury” is than you or I. The worst of the bunch came while filming the ending. “Five men fell off the side of the building at the same time,” says Prachya. “One of the men landed on his head and he had a neck injury so we had to send him to the hospital.”

All in all, seeing an autistic teenage girl unleash an unholy asskicking on 200 baddies makes Chocolate one of the most satisfying martial films you could ever hope for. Before my time hanging out with Prachya was up, he offered up these two secret tips on how to make a wicked martial arts film. “Firstly, you have to put in something new that the audience has never seen before. Secondly, you have to make it real for the audience. For example, if a person hits someone, they should hit them the hardest but make sure the person receiving it isn’t hurt… much.”