At the moment Tony Jaa (Ong Bak) is Thailand’s most famous martial arts star. With his incredible stunts that sometimes seem to defy gravity and other laws of nature he has deserved his fame. Jija Yanin Vismitananda, who plays Zen in this movie, is being marketed as the next big star coming out of Thailand. Does Chocolate show that she has what it takes or is it just a case of clever marketing using the road already created by Jaa?
Chocolate tells the story of Zen, an autistic girl, who doesn’t communicate a lot because of what happened in her past. She will be happy when she receives candy and has extremely quick reflexes. If someone throws something at her she will be able to catch it and she watches a lot of Tony Jaa movies, giving her her fighting skills.
Her mother had a relationship with a gangster, but fled away from him. Unfortunately he still keeps an eye on her. When she becomes ill, it is Zen, together with a friend, who finds a list of people who still owe her some money. Together they decide to visit those people to get money for treatment. Of course no one wants to pay, which is the perfect setup for a lot of fighting.
Filming fight scenes is something that is an art in itself. A lot of years ago I did a workshop about martial arts in movies as a promotion of the movie The One starring Jet Li. I learned that it is very important to exaggerate the moves you make as it wouldn’t make it interesting/spectacular when you film it. It was a fun workshop.
Of course there’s more than only choreography. You want to show the fight in a dynamic way. This is usually done by using various cameras from different angles and adding sound effects. If you hit someone in real life you will not hear as much sounds as you do in the movies.
The choreography of the fights in Chocolate is good. Jija Yanin Vismitananda is quick and it’s fun to watch her fight. The camera work disappointed me, which resulted in not being as impressed by all the fights. Some scenes I really had the feeling that the editing should have been better as you could almost imagine someone just having called “Action!”.
I don’t think Jija Yanin Vismitananda is as amazing as Tony Jaa, but in Chocolate she does show she’s a convincing fighter. As she plays someone with autism is not possible to say a lot about her acting.
If you like your martial arts movie, then Chocolate is a movie that will entertain you. The story is very simple, but sufficient to give the character a reason to fight. And in the end that’s the reason you watch these movies.
Score: 7