Whatever happened to Tony Jaa? The mid-sized (5’8″) Thai martial arts giant was hotly tipped to be the next big thing in action cinema after his 2003 breakthrough “Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior.” He never really left us, even if his international crossover success hit a snag after the sequels to “Ong Bak” ran into some production difficulties.
Recently, Jaa’s co-starred in a handful of Hong Kong and Chinese productions, including the impressive 2020 Eurasian video game adaptation “Monster Hunter,” as well as a couple of hit spin-offs to the thrilling Hong Kong cops-vs.-crooks thriller “Sha Po Lang” (aka: “Kill Zone” in America) and the record-smashing Lunar New Year comedy “Detective Chinatown.” Jaa’s great in an ensemble but hasn’t led a star vehicle in over a decade.
Now there’s “Striking Rescue,” a Chinese-produced Tony Jaa beat-’em-up that starts with a one-against-all brawl that reminds action fans why he’s such a commanding on-screen presence. Within the first five minutes, Jaa, as the obsessed vigilante Bai An, bursts into a warehouse full of heavies, tensed and ready to fight. “Why?” he growls. “Why my family?”
You don’t need a road map for this type of story and at first, the makers of “Striking Rescue” don’t hurry to answer An. A perfunctory, but negligible flashback gives us enough of an explanation to start: An’s wife (Fan Yumeng) and daughter (Ma Ruohan) were killed by drug smugglers, whom we later learn are in league with the well-meaning but clueless industrialist He Yinghao (Philip Keung).
All you need to know in the beginning is that Tony Jaa’s angry and there’s an awful lot of stuntmen and breakable surfaces in his way. The movie’s introductory melee doesn’t just provide a bold start to An’s story: its exultant presentation, dynamic lighting and blocking, and gasp-inducing choreography announce Jaa’s return to marquee-topping stardom.
Despite this bracing start, “Striking Rescue” does not always focus on Bai An. Rather, many scenes concern Yinghao’s plucky pre-teen daughter, Ting (Chen Duoyi), who refuses to believe that her father isn’t the stubborn but righteous man she knows him to be. An kidnaps Ting, which puts her squarely in the way of the vicious druglord Clay (Mao Fan), who’s been using Yinghao’s company as a front for his business. Yinghao’s also got a lanky, stoic security guy, Wu Zheng (Eason Hung), to fight on his behalf. Hung’s fine, but his fight scenes lack the crazed spark and by-the-throat intensity of Jaa’s scenes, making it hard to maintain a certain level of live-wire excitement.
Still, there’s enough pleasurably pulpy twists and dialogue exchanges throughout “Striking Rescue” to offset the hardest bumps in An’s well-traveled path. He’s got nothing to lose and a set of knees and elbows for days, so nothing can stop him, not even a lot of broken English dialogue, which is sadly even more pronounced thanks to imprecise subtitles. These (numerous) translation errors can be awkward whenever Jaa and his largely Mandarin-speaking cast-mates try to sell their movie’s comic book drama, bellowing declaratively and threatening each other with abandon. That’s most endearing when the movie’s stuntmen, led by action director Guo Yulong, also get to do their thing, especially when Jaa is flying after various baddies elbows-first or riding them like toboggans through various hard surfaces.
While the action scenes may be the best reason to watch “Striking Rescue,” they’re not the only ones. There’s almost enough off-kilter energy to keep pace with Jaa’s on-screen intensity. There’s nothing apologetic or self-conscious about this kind of straight-ahead chase/revenge actioner, so even the corniest dialogue still has its charms. I’m particularly fond of when Ting insists, “My dad and I hate drugs more than anything,” or when one of Clay’s heavies (Shi Yanneng) insists, “It seems that I overestimated you. You are not qualified to be my enemy,” like he’s M. Bison and has somehow just defeated Jaa in “Super Street Fighter II.”
Some graceless transitions, bad English, and rough-around-the-edges image compositing can be distracting; they can also add an extra surreal something to the movie’s adrenalized charms. If it still existed, “Striking Rescue” would play for months on display TVs at that little Times Square Shuttle-adjacent home video emporium that used to show low-res trailers and murky bootlegs of the latest Jackie Chan and Donnie Yen vehicles. Jaa’s latest is an action fan’s delight and its filmmakers are so devoted to their genre’s conventions that you can’t help but smile when, in a later fight, An’s flagging energy gets a sudden (if necessary) boost when his opponent mentions his wife and kid. That’s when Jaa grabs a small aluminum bat from a nearby wall mount and starts swinging. Welcome back, Mr. Jaa, you were missed.
