seriousfic

Raging Phoenix stars Yanin "Jeeja" Vismistananda as Deu. You may remember her as the heroine in Chocolate. For those comics fans who are wondering what became of Cassandra Cain, Jeeja is proof that she somehow entered into the real world, Purple Rose of Cairo-style, and started a film career.

She's a riot grrl getting over a bad break-up when she's attacked by a gang. A mysterious group saves her, with kung-fu natch, and they fall in together. Deu gets an offer to be trained in martial arts and fight evil, which must be the Eastern equivalent of getting a chance to go with the Doctor.

"Oh, the redhead? That's just my other companion, Donna. No, we're not together, we've no sexual interest in each other whatsoever. She's rather undersexed really, desperate to be in a relationship. Why, if she was with someone, I'd bet she'd let them do all kinds of things to her! All kinds of things."

I will never get tired of posting that picture.

As her training continues, Deu becomes one of a band of fighters dedicated to bringing down a gang of sex slavers... with drunken boxing and breakdance-fighting. Kind of a tonal disconnect there. Like Professor Layton joining SVU. "Slide opposing blocks out of the way to check the kiddie fiddler's alibi!" The eventual specifics of the bad guys are so comic book-y that you can't take them too seriously ("Just another batch of kidnappers operating out of a massive underground lair."), but still... the comic relief is fighting evil because his wife was killed and had her organs sold on the black market. C'mon, Taiwan, what happened to beating the crap out of an entire demographic because your elephant was stolen?

Refreshingly, even though she was attacked by sex slavers, Deu isn't motivated by revenge for being raped. After all, she got saved by kung-fu. Her chief concern is saving other women, with some side benefits like getting to know a cute boy, becoming a angst-fu master, and not being bored. That's right, no "secret origin: sexual assault." So I guess a group of Taiwanese kung-fu flick makers are more feminist than some of the "progressive" writers in the comic book and film industry. Take that, racial stereotyping.

If I have one complaint, it's that they eventually introduce the Big Bad and she's basically the most badass HBIC ever. Her name is London, she's played by a bodybuilder named Roongtawan Jindasing, and don't worry, human trafficking isn't nearly silly enough to be her MO. But she's barely in the movie! Oh, and for some reason this is her victory pose.

She uses her defeated enemies as throw pillows! What even!

I was hoping we could get an entire movie, either a start of darkness or a redemptive arc, that focuses on her going around and beating up playa-haters. It'd still be more of a proper sequel than Ong Bak 2.