This Girl Is Badass Blu-ray offers decent video and solid audio, but overall it's a poor Blu-ray release
Taekwondo master Jeeja Yanin takes her skills to the next level as a bike messenger hired by competing mob bosses to smuggle goods. Caught in the middle and given an ultimatum, the only way out is a confrontation erupting into a battle of bullets, face kicks, and blows.
Discovered by Ong-Bak director Prachya Pinkaew—who molded her in Chocolate and The Kick into a high-flying, female
equivalent of Tony Jaa—Yanin "Jeeja" Vismitananda is indeed a badass. She has a third-degree black belt in taekwondo. She has a sense of balance
that rivals that of a street cat. She's a pint-sized 5'2", but you wouldn't want to cross her in a dark alley, especially not one littered with pipes and
broken bottles and other urban detritus she'd inevitably use against you whilst flip-kicking off the walls. If you've seen any of her previous films, you
know she's capable of incredible physical feats. And perhaps that's what you're expecting from This Girl is Badass—a barrage of jaw-dropping,
high-intensity action sequences where Jeeja gets to show off her impossible moves.
If so, you'll probably be more than a little disappointed. There are some prolonged fight scenes here, but not only are they few and far
between, they're also choreographed in a ho-hum, far from innovative style. Although the movie is an action-comedy, there's far more of the latter
than the former, and not much of it is very funny. The film was clearly made with a Thai audience in mind, so—to Westerner viewers—there's
definitely something lost in the translation of the non-stop jokes and one-liners. What's left is a parade of goofy sight-gags, over-the-top character tics,
and ridiculous costuming.
Yanin "Jeeja" Vismitananda
Jeeja is hammy as Jukkalan, a tomboyish Bangkok bike messenger and orphan who lives with her uncle, Wang, a video store owner played by the
film's director, famous Thai comedian Petchtai Wongkamlao. (Whom you might recognize as Tony Jaa's pal in Ong-Bak or the lead in The
Bodyguard and its sequel. I'd say he's in a good two-thirds of the Thai movies exported to the West in the past decade.) While most bike
messengers ferry legal documents, Jukkalan's work is a bit more dodgy; she's essentially a drug and/or money mule for two rival mobsters, Boss Seng
—who has a weirdly high-pitched voice—and Boss Piak (Anek Intajan), who employs a haram of sexy female assassins to do his bidding, and has a gimp
in what looks like a head-to-toe sweatsuit for a best friend.
I'll give Thai movies this—their villains are always memorable, at least. They aren't the only ones who stand out as absurd; Jukkalan's employer (Kom
Chuanchuen) is a fashion victim with twirling eyebrows and a Hitler mustache who rides around nearly naked on what I can only describe as a glorified,
mobile rocking horse. (You really have to see it to understand it.) There's also Duan (Akhom Pridakun), an "ugly" boy with jacked-up teeth who wears
white pants, pastel shirts, and a bow-tie—with a purple sweater draped around his shoulders—and who's desperately in love with the unreciprocating
Jukkalan. She's only got eyes for her rockstar next-door neighbor, who himself can't return her love because he's more fond of "elephant fighting." I'll
let you figure out what that means, but let's just say it has something to do with his "trunk."
The film's plot is exceedingly simple, but complicated and padded with lots of melodramatic and "comedic" filler. Unbeknownst to her boss, Jukkalan has
been skimming cash and drugs from the packages she's meant to deliver—she's trying to save up to travel the world—and when the two gangsters find
out, they each send their foot-soldiers out to beat her up and get back the goods. This, of course, doesn't end well for them. There are four main fight
scenes in the film, and if you've ever seen a Thai martial arts movie before, you may as well have already seen this one. Aside from Jeeja using her
fixie as a weapon—which is pretty badass—there's not much new here. The coolest fight—a brawl in the bike shop—has Jukkalan frisbee-ing
gears like throwing stars, roping baddies with deflated tires, and using lug-nuts on her fingers as brass knuckles. The others are strictly routine. A
showdown in the rain is shot in tedious slow-motion, and the overlong taekwondo-meets-gunplay finale goes down in a warehouse filled with pottery,
for seemingly no other reason than to have something for the combatants to break. You've seen better.
The action scenes aren't nearly enough to carry the movie. The entire middle stretch of the film is devoted to the characters' various interpersonal
crises, which just aren't very interesting. Shy Uncle Wang can't work up the nerve to woo his next-door neighbor, but shows his love by protecting her
from the loan sharks set to shut down her laundromat. Duan follows Jukkalan around like a dejected puppy. There's even a whole sequence where
Jukkalan teaches the boy she likes how to make pumpkin soup. The drama is all played broadly—hokey, theatrical—and most of the comedy is just as
obvious, going for the big, dumb, easy laughs. Some of it, though, is incomprehensibly odd, and the subtitles aren't much help. This is the first time
I've ever heard "cat bowel" used as an insult, and probably the last, as I doubt I'll ever feel the need to watch This Girl is Badass again.
In general, This Girl Is Badass looks more like a low-budget TV show than a feature film. I haven't been able to confirm any technical
specifications, but This Girl is Badass seems to have been shot on lower-end professional digital HD gear, since many of the usual flaws of that
class of cameras is noticeable here. Highlights frequently blow out, bright colors and skin tones sometimes seem pale or out of balance, and aliasing often
affects fine parallel lines. (See the scene where Jukkalan is rifling through files at the bike shop office.) Wide shots have a tendency to go soft, but
closeups do reveal a good bit of fine detail, with visible textures in faces and clothing. While the color grading is a little wonky at times—with occasional
white balance issues and inconsistent contrast—there's not much that Magnolia could've done about that. For their part, the encode looks fairly solid,
with no obvious compression problems or other issues that aren't inherent in the source.
Magnolia has given us two audio options here, the original Thai mix and an English dub, both in the lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 codec, and both
practically indiscernible—in volume, clarity, and immersiveness—apart from the dialogue. Normally I shy away from dubs, but this one's fun in a so-bad-
it's-good sort of way, especially anytime the two gangster villains speak up. Still, the Thai track is probably the one to choose. The mix is fairly standard
for this kind of film, with exaggerated sound effects—huge body blows, explosive gunshots, heavy footfalls—and a modicum of rear channel ambience,
like wind and street sounds and room acoustics. Voices can sometimes sound a little low in the mix, but never to the extent of being incomprehensible.
Everything is clear and punchy, with no peaking or other obvious mixing problems. Music is the loudest element of the track, a blaring melange of break-
beats and generic crunchy guitar riffs for the action sequences, while other, more-subdued cues go for "whimsy" and "romance" to accentuate the
appropriate tone of each scene. The disc includes optional English, English SDH, and Spanish subtitles, which appear in easy-to-read yellow lettering.
The Making of This Girl is Badass (SD, 7:03): A short featurette with cast interviews, some behind-the-scenes footage, and
clips from the film. In Thai, with English subtitles.
Behind the Scenes (SD, 1:57): A montage of additional b-roll footage.
A not-so-funny comedy first and an action movie second, This Girl is Badass will come as a disappointment to those hoping for another
Chocolate. Although star Yanin "Jeeja" Vismitananda has at least one kick-ass, visually interesting fight scene, the few others in the film are
your usual assortment of warehouse brawls and rainy night slo-mo showdowns. You've seen it all before. This might've been okay if the comedic angle
was better, but the humor here is simultaneously too broad and too lost in translation obscure to generate many laughs. Most audiences will be
bored or worse, leaving This Girl is Badass for the hardcore Thai martial arts enthusiasts who will see anything starring Jeeja. You know who you
are.
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