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Slap, pow, wallop, bang

Dan Chupong ups the weird quotient in Dynamite Warrior. PHOTO: COURTESY OF CROWN FILMS

Dynamite Warrior, a Thai martial arts film, starts with a bang, which is to say a fight: It's fast, colorful and well choreographed.

The film is set in Thailand, just as the country begins to industrialize. The evil Lord Waeng (Puttipong Sriwat) wants to replace buffalo with the tractors he sells. The result: lots of fighting. On a parallel track, the hero, Jone Bang Fai (Dan Chupong), is avenging the death of his parents. The result: lots of fighting.

Dynamite Warrior is a genre confection with more than a passing resemblance to Hong Kong martial arts movies of the 1980s. It opts for comedy over character, and action over everything.

The film's next-strongest allegiance is to keeping the strange quotient high: Lord Waeng is from the giggling psychopath school of villainy. There is also a midget, a cannibal, ghosts, demons, the oft-invoked menstrual blood of a virgin and those homemade rockets, which look like a cartoon storm of flying logs.

The action can be wearying, and the weirdness forced. But the director, Chalerm Wongpim, keeps it all moving along at such a clip that you're more likely to leave the theater smiling than yawning.

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