Chocolate city

I wasn't aware of the existence of Thai director Prachya Pinkaew's 2008 martial arts flick Chocolate until a few weeks ago, when Netflix placed the movie on a list of rentals I might enjoy.

After I read Netflix's synopsis of their recommendation--"a young autistic woman who discovers that she has the uncanny ability to absorb precision fighting skills just by watching martial arts movies"--I immediately added it to my queue and placed it at the #1 spot because "Sampler," the Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology short story I created, has a similar premise. In my story (the very reason why this weekend, I'll be making my first appearance at a comic book convention as a guest talent, even though it's at one of the smaller conventions, the new Asian American ComiCon), a dry cleaning store worker named June temporarily acquires the powers of her superhero customers by touching their costumes.



The autistic, candy-craving Chocolate heroine's superpower is actually more about "photographic reflexes"--like forgotten Heroes supermimic Monica Dawson and the Marvel Comics supervillain Taskmaster, whom Alan Sepinwall said must have been the inspiration for Monica--than power-absorption-by-touch. (In one of millions of lines that were deleted from "Sampler" by Secret Identities editor-in-chief Jeff Yang, June explains that she's able to sample superpowers because she's a mutant, or a "superior," a term I created for mutants in earlier drafts. In order to sample a mutant's power, June has to touch that mutant's fingerprint residue or any other traces of DNA left behind anywhere, whether it's on an item they touched or a garment they wore. I know--you're probably thinking, "Ewwww, so does that mean she would have to come into contact with the love stains inside Cyclops' unitard in order to shoot lasers from her eyes?" In the R-rated or TV-MA-rated version of "Sampler," unfortunately, yes.)

Below Sepinwall's recap of Heroes' introduction of Monica, a commenter joked, "Jeez, a hero whose superpower is that she's really, really good at watching TV?" In Chocolate, Zen (Jija Yanin) acquires her fighting moves in a similar fashion by viewing TV broadcasts of Muay Thai flicks like Pinkaew's own previous work, the Tony Jaa vehicle Ong-Bak, or in my favorite sequence, observing the movements of a henchman who has Tourette's. Yep, it's a South Park "Cripple Fight"-esque duel that pits mentally challenged fighter against physically challenged fighter (and though it's my favorite showdown in Chocolate, it's too quickly resolved).

No gang would accept physically challenged thugs--or transvestites--into its fold like the evil Thai crime family in Chocolate does. Gangsters aren't exactly known for being open-minded and tolerant. That's how much of a martial arts fantasy Chocolate is. It's like the multiracial Street Thunder gang in the original Assault on Precinct 13. You immediately knew John Carpenter's film was more of a hyperrealistic crime flick than a realistic one because in real life, no gang would be that racially mixed.



I've previously said I'm not much of a fan of the martial arts genre. Even the fight sequences in some of the martial arts actioners I've enjoyed, like the first two Once Upon a Time in China installments, can get boring after a while. Chocolate's otherwise decent climax gets tedious at one point--I kept thinking, "C'mon, when's the main villain gonna finally lose consciousness? What is he? The Thai Energizer Bunny?"

Despite the tedious climax, a cancer-patient-mother subplot that's a bit too melodramatic for my tastes, and a crew of transvestite assassins who would fit right in with The Celluloid Closet's montage of evil gays from Freebie and the Bean and The Silence of the Lambs(*), the otherwise inventive Chocolate won me over, which is something of a miracle because I'm one of the few guys in America who actually didn't cry during Rudy. The premise of an undersized underdog overcoming adversity or physical limitations through combat is always appealing, whether it's in Rudy, Chocolate or even "Sampler."

(*) If I ever have to defend Chocolate to gay critics, I'd probably say, "Well, I agree, but in fairness, at least Chocolate doesn't ignore the tranny population in Thailand." I'd also say, "And the big bad's tranny second-in-command wasn't a weakling like in Freebie and the Bean. He was a badass with a gun."

A recent TCM Movie Morlocks blog post praises the coherently shot, Fred Astaire-style ass-whupping Donnie Yen gives to Sammo Hung in Hong Kong action maestro Wilson Yip's Kill Zone and explains why American action films pale in comparison to Asian actioners:

One excuse given as to why films like Taken or the Bourne series don't have this same kind of coherence is that the actors aren't as physically trained as martial arts pros like Hung and Yen, and necessarily need stunt doubles, necessitating even faster cuts and less spatial coherence. However, American action films don't necessarily have to have nuanced fighting styles – just watch the series of haymakers Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston unload on each other in The Big Country (which can be seen in the video slideshow of Dennis Lim's excellent history of fight choreography at Slate). It's a stylistic choice, and right now Hollywood filmmakers are making the wrong one. I was initially thrilled by the Bourne series' propulsive energy, but the more time that passes, the more its fractured editing seems like a dodge.

Fortunately, the fight sequences in Chocolate are as coherently shot as the Kill Zone sequence. That means each of Yanin's graceful moves aren't disrupted by a choppy edit. The sequences look like they must have been genuinely grueling to perform, and Chocolate's closing credits outtakes of Yanin and the stuntmen badly injuring themselves prove it. Adding to the coherence and credibility of Chocolate's sequences is the fact that like Hung and Yen, the charismatic, twentysomething Yanin is a pro, although she wasn't at first. She received two years' worth of intensive martial arts training after Pinkaew cast her as Zen, which means Chocolate took four years to make.

Yanin is a martial arts star to watch. A box-office hit in Thailand, Chocolate was popular enough to spawn a comic book and another high-concept martial arts flick for Yanin. Her next vehicle, Raging Phoenix, will involve another new-to-the-genre gimmick like Chocolate's introduction of an autistic heroine: hip-hop dancing. I take it Raging Phoenix will be like Ong-Bak meets You Got Served.