This is the trailer for Chocolate, from Prachya Pinkaew, director of Ong-bak and The Protector, which made a super-star of Tony Jaa. It’s about an autistic girl who picks up martial-arts skills from TV and their next-door neighbours, a muay thai academy. She uses those skills to collect debts on behalf of her ill mother, which incurs the wrath of both local and Japanese gangs. As with Pinkaew’s earlier films, there is no wire-work or CGI – it’s all raw, athletic ability, and based on this trailer alone (or even the painful out-takes), it could be the best action heroine film of 2008. The Thai release is February 8.
