The camera man must have been exhausted

This – apparently the best or longest fighting sequence ever – has been making the rounds. It’s from a Thai film. It guess it’s very impressive that they keep it going in one edit – in the same way that guy who eats all those wet hot dogs without throwing up is impressive. With more kicking, of course.

I do want one of the vanquished thugs to get back up and shoot the protagonist. Since the film is set in the present it is a bit of stretch to claim that nobody, in what seems to be a well-manned criminal enterprise, is willing to use a firearm. Even if Asian societies are less gun oriented than ours, globalization has to have melded our violent habits together enough for one of the dudes to be packing.

In sitcoms before the mid-nineties a comic staple was the frustration arising from being at the wrong place at the wrong time -- misunderstandings which could have been easily resolved if the characters had cell phones. (The first few seasons of Seinfeld are full of examples of this.)

None of those “just missed” scenarios would be accepted if the sitcom was taking place today. But I guess that type of suspension of modernity is so paramount for the maintenance of the martial arts genre you have to grin and bear it. And that’s why I’m not much for martial arts films. Hobbits and elves and dwarves and humans questing through Middle Earth is one thing, but when some karate master is taking on an army of thugs in a hotel using only the weapons God gave him – and winning – I’m so busy yelling “shoot him in the face” I can’t really appreciate the choreography