Raging Phoenix [Blu-ray]

I love this movie better than her film "Chocolate".I like the fact that she really gets to act a lot more in this film.From happy to sad,and drunk,my favorite part in the movie.With the mastery of the drunken fighting style,its so much fun to see her kick these guys butts.An the music during the fight scene is so spot on.

To sum up the film: Very cool action set pieces; bloody awful story. We knew there was gonna be imense pressure for Jeeja Yanin's sophomore work to equal or surpass her debut film CHOCOLATE and, to be honest, RAGING PHOENIX carries a whiff of trying too hard. Jeeja Yanin in CHOCOLATE played a mildly autistic debt collector and so it makes sense to have her switching it up in this one. She plays Deu, one of those party girls who have too much free time on her hands. The film opens during a spectacularly bad series of moments for Deu. She gets kicked out of her rock band, gets spectacularly liquored up, and then gets abducted by a girl and by - and I guess this is the Thai sense of humor at work - a chubby transvestite. She's saved by a melancholy dude named Sanim who along the way fends off a bunch of goons on pogo stilts sporting wicked sharp blades - this, by the way, doesn't at all seem contrived. Really. Deu ends up joining Sanim's tiny band of inebriated martial artists, and these guys specialize in "Meyraiyuth," a form of drunken Muay Thai boxing which incorporates breakdancing. We learn along the way that Sanim and his friends are seeking an elusive organization of kidnappers. It's not too long before Deu picks up drunken Muay Thai boxing. In fact, it may be best to overlook the inordinately short amount of time it takes Deu to pick up impressive fighting skills. Personally, it's even more challenging for me to buy into Jeeja Yanin's pretending to be this girl who, at the start of the film, can't fight at all.Likewise, it's best not to dwell too much on the kidnappers' target victims. It all has to do with certain women exuding a particular scent, and these women are taken so that their tears could be extracted and sold as a curative for staggering sums of money. It's all pretty "What the f---?"Like in Tony Jaa's movies - and I wonder if we'll always be comparing JeeJa Yanin to Tony Jaa? - RAGING PHOENIX has a sketchy plot which is there solely to frame the crunching slugfests. What sort of sinks the picture is that things often get bogged down in superfluous plot exposition and forced melodrama. When no one is getting a sharp knee to the face, the pace slows downs to a snail's pace. There are also times when our girl sounds really shrill and when I was thinking that maybe she was better off in CHOCOLATE when she barely had dialogue. She's not as wooden as Tony Jaa. In fact, Jeeja does demonstrate expressiveness and personality (dug her drunken Muay Thai when she first goes off on her own). I blame a screenplay that's listless and the shoddy direction and the fact that this is a Thai martial arts film, a genre which tends to ignore trivial details like good acting and fine execution of story.We're here strictly for the martial arts stuff, so how was that? Just when I was thinking that THE REBEL's Veronica Ngo was the new lady sheriff in town when it came to buttkicking heroines, here's that wisp of a girl Jeeja Yanin once more kneeing opponents in their painful parts. There are several fight sequences here, and the first two has our heroine taking a back seat to French-Vietnamese martial artist "Kazu" Patrick Tang.("Sanim") and his crew (comprised of members of a B-Boy band in real life). These sequences are really nifty, if unrealistic. The first fight, against the pogo stilt henchmen, demonstrates Kazu's athleticism. The second is the big drunken Muay Thai boxing showcase, and it's cool to see our guys popping and locking and breakdancing while handling their business against some more evil henchmen. The music playing in the background amps you up, too.Jeeja Yanin gets in the act in later encounters - and her character even challenges one of Sanim's guys into a duel by the beach - but, really, it's not until the final 30 minutes that the real Jeeja Yanin comes out to play. Her brutal beat down of two formidable martial artists is an electrifying highlight. But then to top it off, she takes on the menacing female leader of the kidnappers in a rematch (her previous tussle with her, over a lattice of shaky wooden bridges, ended somewhat in a draw). The film's Big Bad is played by Roongtawan Jindasing who is a champion body builder in real life, and she looks mean enough to wipe the floor with you and me and Shaquille O'Neal (and while she's wearing a bikini bra, no less). And, in the department of "That's Really Gonna Leave A Funky Bruise," JeeJa Yanin's devastating finishing move on Jindasing will drop your jaw. Yanin does her own stunts again, and it's crazy insane to see her acrobatic moves and observe the impact her blows have. Just when I'd thought I'd seen everything Muay Thai had to offer, Yanin demonstrates a series of electrifying maneuvers. I almost don't mind the sometimes glaringly obvious wire work.This rating thing is pretty subjective. I'm compelled to give this film 3 stars out of 5 (breaks down to 5 stars for the fighting, 1 star for the crappalicious story content). Except that if you already knew going in that the story would get the back seat treatment and you only showed up to see JeeJa Yanin pummel thugs anyway, do you then only rate this for the action bits? I dunno. I say, 3 stars.Last thing for me. Seriously, what awful ungodly brew was in that jug that everyone had to drink to cement their team membership? It's got me curious.

I was interested in this film primarily because I was looking for more films by it star, JeeJa Yanin, who blew me away in her first and only previous film, Chocolate. I found Chocolate a few years ago while searching for more films by the producer/director of the film Ong-Bak (Muay Thai Warrior), Prachya Pinkaew, and had been wanting to see more of Yanin ever since. I had been a longtime lover of (mostly Chinese and American) martial arts films, and Ong-Bak was my introduction to Thai martial arts films, and it was just PHENOMENAL, the acrobatic fighting style and skill level of star Tony Jaa was unlike anything I'd ever seen. Pinkaew also created Chocolate, the breakout film for star JeeJa Yanin. Some of the fight scenes and stunts she did in that film were just unparalleled feats of awesome!Looking for more of her films, I found Raging Phoenix, by a different producer/director, but with the same fight choreographer as Ong-Bak and Chocolate (Weerapon Poomatfon). While the premise of the film was a bit silly, the fight choreography (and execution) was just AMAZING. Poomatfon devised incredibly inventive setups/scenarios for the fights, and some really remarkable cooperative fighting (e.g. 2 people working together to fight one or more others... often swinging their partner around in acrobatic ways to use them as a weapon).SUMMARY:This film is DEFINITELY worth the streaming rental fee to watch purely for the incredibly inventive fight choreography. I'd be happy to watch any other film starring JeeJa Yanin or with action choreographed by the unparalleled Weerapon Poomatfon - their work utterly blows me away every time.

Delivery condition, timing, and such were fine. Just as, if not a little better than expected. 4 stars for that. Thing is, I'm 99.9% certain I ordered, very intentionally, an SD DVD because that is what's compatible with my current HTPC. I received a Blu-Ray though and I can only watch those on my PS4. First world complaint about a first world problem. Minus one first world star

Jeeja in this film was just as entertaining as she was in the movie Chocolate along with SOME of the other performers, but the biggest letdown came towards the end fight scene between her character & the main "female" antagonist. The reason why I placed quotations around female, is because it wasn't the actress at all that was involved in any of the fight scenes. Instead it was a stunt MAN that did all the cool looking moves. I know this is how action films are generally made, but at least most of the others I've seen in the past made a better conscious effort was to hide this very well known fact with selective camera angles while filming. This movie crew did no such thing & you can clearly see the stunt persons' face right in plain view. This REALLY took me out of the rest of the movie even though I enjoyed it up until that point. Now that I'm writing this review I also recall being able to see the faces of a couple of other stunt guys as well during other fight scenes towards the end of the movie. Maybe everyone became lazy, & just wanted to wrap things up as quickly as they could. It does ruin the imagination of believing the actors doing everything themselves, & I hope I don't have to witness something like this too often in the future.

Very action packed.

Thank you very happy videos

Not bad movie 😡

Pretty Grim.

Took a while to get going, not up to the same standard of production as "Chocolate".