Chocolate
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Asian cinema is different from American cinema. When in America filmmakers are often armed with enormous budgets, Asian cinema is trying to survive with what it has while still delivering the same, if not more, entertainment value. It's not that hard when dealing with dramas. There most of the time the story is about a few people in few locations, talking and crying with one another. Which is not expensive. But it's an entirely different challenge when you are trying to compete within the action-film market.
There are two approaches. One is illustrated by the Indian cinema perfectly and is the source of success of such directors as S.S. Rajamouli. Basically to make everything as over-the-top and stylistic as you can. In such a way you can use a lot of not so good CGI to cover whatever you don't have the money to shoot. And if your style is cartoony enough, you can get away with it.
The other approach is to sacrifice as much people as possible and focus on fight scenes and stunts. This is the way people like Jackie Chan and Tony Jaa became successful. Chocolate is from the second category. It even has a during credits montage of failed stunts and injuries. Similar to Jackie Chan's Chinese movies.
Chocolate, directed by Prachya Pinkaew (Thai: ปรัชญา ปิ่นแก้ว) and starring Yanin Vismitananda (Thai: ญาณิน วิสมิตะนันทน์) is a weird kind of Asian martial arts movie. First of all, it's not made in china. It's Thai. And the protagonist is not a cool dude. It is instead an autistic teenage girl.
I saw it without translation. It has Thai, Japanese and sometimes English. But I had to rely on the visual storytelling to understand the movie for the most part. The director of the film is good enough that I didn't need much verbal communication to understand things. So even if you can't find a translated version of the film, don't worry about it. Pinkaew is good enough at his job. You don't need to understand what they are all saying to enjoy the movie.
The movie is violent. Kind of reminding the style of Quentin Tarantino specifically the first Kill Bill film, since it's similar to this movie, because they both have martial art scenes with female protagonists. Though Chocolate is a lot more tear-squeezing. Even though I didn't understand a single word they were saying I was crying throughout most of it. Even during the fight scenes. The actors and the director are that good. It doesn't mean though that it's not funny or awesome. It is designed very much to make you feel the full spectrum of emotions. And the director is not shy from shocking the hell out of you.
The film is structured like a video-game. The main character goes to different places just for a fight scene to happen there. And each of those places has a boss person that is a kind of boss level. This movie would have been very well translated into a video-game.
The main praise I could give the movie is how the main character is portrayed. You know if there is a bad-ass female warrior, she tends to wear very little clothes. Or be covered with tight leathery clothes. And while it could be awesome, it's not what Chocolate went for. I think Chocolate invented the Japanese Kawaii Metal genre popularized by the Japanese metal band Babymetal. It is a very thorough mix of brutality and cuteness. The main character Zen is insanely cute. Not sexy, cute. She wears regular kosher clothes. She wears baggy pants. And she looks like a child. And due to her autism even acts like a toddler at times. And this combined with her insane martial arts bad-assery, makes the movie very emotionally stimulating.
When the movie ended I immediately wanted more. It's that good!
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