Someone just threw a couple of interviews with Ong Bak fight choreographer Panna Rittikrai online and, man, this guy’s flat out insane … the stuff he’ll do for the camera makes you think he’s got a death wish on a serious scale. He once drove his motorcycle at high speed head on into a transport truck. Getting the picture? All natural stunts – no wires, no rigs and absolutely no CGI. Madness. Anyway, the interviews are here – you’ll need to scroll down through the thread to find them – and include some spoilers on the stunt work and a brief synopsis. Rather than focus on martial arts and fighters for Born to Fight Rittikrai has opted to use high profile Thai national athletes and built extensive stunt sequences around their athletic abilities. Included are a football player (I assume that would be football as in soccer), a gymnast, a takraw star, a taekwondo champion, a member of the national rugby team, a muay thai champion and a 70+ year old martial arts master. The star athletes are cast, apporopriately enough, as a group of star athletes doing a benefit show for a poor village who are thrown into a confrontation with gun wielding gangsters.
High art? Nope, but I’ll bet it’s going to be an awful lot of fun …
