From the Rental Vault: The Protector (2005)

When Tatchakorn Yeerum was growing up, he idolized movie martial artists like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li. He would imitate their moves while doing his daily chores.

When he grew up, he took the stage name Tony Jaa and began working in movies in Thailand himself, first as a stunt double and then as a co-producer and director with his mentor, Panna Rittikrai. His breakout came in 2003 with the lead role in Ong-Bak: Muy Thai Warrior, a story of a villager trained in the martial art of muy thai who defeats gangsters to recover a precious village artifact.

He didn't travel far, character-wise, for his second role in 2005 in Tom-Yum-Goong, marketed in the United States as The Protector. He plays Kham, a member of a family that has traditionally raised and guarded the elephants that serve the King of Thailand. The King doesn't use war-elephants any more, except as display, but Kham's family maintains their service in their village.

When a scheme to steal the elephants brings the loss of two of Kham's favorites and the murder of his father, he seeks out the thieves -- both to recover the elephants and take his revenge. The trail leads him to the underworld of Sydney, Australia, and enmeshes him in the power struggles of a ruthless syndicate. Friendless except for a handful of people he meets who speak his language, Kham has a lot of fighting ahead of him, which is fortunate, because he has a lot of rage to visit upon those who stole his charges.

Tom-Yum-Goong in many ways fits the formula of the martial arts movies that Jaa grew up admiring, only updated with modern camera and stunt work. Story and acting take a backseat to the fighting and the stunts, with the appeal of the movie aimed directly at fans of martial arts brawls. The criminal enterprise and police corruption plot exist only to frame the fight sequences.

Chan took martial arts fighting sequences in an entirely different direction, making use of furniture, buildings and random items laying around the set to choreograph an almost slapstick-toned battle. Jaa stays more inventive than just punch-kick-throw but doesn't inject as much humor into his own sequences. Jaa and Rittikrai tweaked muay thai fighting into a style they called muay kodchasaan, incorporating an elephant's defensive use of its trunk into Jai's own moves and countermoves.

Investment in other aspects of the movie are limited. Jai does make a convincing rural naif in the city, apparently thinking he can land at the airport in Sydney and start walking around in order to find his elephants and their kidnappers. Petchthai Wongkamlao as a Aussie-Thai policeman who helps Kham probably gets the most fleshing out after Jaa, but any depth comes as much from his own work as anything the script gives him.

But Tom-Yum-Goong doesn't aim to be anything other than a quickly-paced action movie, and it delivers on that promise. It helped cement Jaa's position in Thai moviemaking and eventually earned a sequel, released in 2013.