Yamada: The Samurai of Ayothaya (Part 2)

So the storytelling was bad but at least the action is good, right? Well, the fighting had its share of problems.

First of all, if you were to judge the fights on choreography alone, the fight scenes in this movie are excellent. However, the fights suffer from excessive post-production special effects overdose.

The fight scenes have this weird thing going on where they suddenly speed up the frames and fists move into a blur as if our eyes cannot even see the inhuman speed of their punches. But then sometimes it goes slow-mo on particularly juicy hits and then abruptly goes normal again. Now these camera tricks are fairly common but its so horribly done in this move. The speed up and slow-mo effects happen in the same scenes. There's no seperate shots or scenes and it really bothers me because it messes with the flow of the fight. What would have been awesome fights turn into extremely fake looking fights where the action is normal then goes fast then normal then slow then normal again.

Speaking of fake, the special effects other than speed tricks also suck. Take for instance the ambush of the poor Hongsawadee raiding party. Every time Yamada swipes at the enemy, there's a highly audible "Tsching!" sound. Despite being a common movie convention, the "Tching!" sound is usually for when blades are drawn so we can tell that it's fightin' time. Sheathes are usually made of wood or leather so realistically, they don't make that sound but we're so used to it now. But here, it's worse because every single time Yamada slashes a mook, it goes"Tching!". Swords don't make that sound when they hit soft, exposed flesh you know. Have you ever heard kitchen knives go "TCHING!" when chopping a piece of meat? To make matters worse, they use the very same "Tching!" sound over and over again.

There are also poorly edited low quality blood splatter effects. It's too obviously CGI. In some scenes, Yamada impales them straight with his sword and the effects showing the sword sticking out the other end looks incredibly fake. I know it's all fake but this really takes me out of the movie. I can only suspend my disbelief so long before all the fake blood splatter and the "Tching!" drives me nuts.

This movie is The Last Samurai meets Ong Bak right? Well, Ong Bak was a lot grittier. This movie lacks grit, that's the problem. It just looks too fake.

Goddamn it.