The highlight is a four-minute-long sequence in which Jaa breaks into enemy headquarters and fights his way up four flights of stairs, all in one unbroken take. The camera follows Jaa's path of destruction, circling the building as he kicks his way past countless henchmen. It is, as that broken English eBay posting suggests, worth the price of admission alone.

Unfortunately, The Protector's mushy plot keeps getting in the way. The movie is basically a love story between a man and his elephant, and if viewed as such, it's not nearly as ridiculous as the movie it first appears to be — an action bonanza in which the matron of a drug-dealing/prostitution/endangered-animal-smuggling ring kidnaps a "perfect elephant" because she thinks it will make her invincible.

The elephant business gives The Protector the dubious distinction of being the world's cuddliest martial arts movie. Imagine how Kill Bill might have played if Uma Thurman's globe-trotting objective had changed from killing Bill to opening a can of whoop-ass on the goons who stole her prized pachyderm (the analogy seems fair, given that the Weinsteins have tapped Quentin Tarantino to "present" yet another sub-par genre movie).

Tony Jaa may have impressed in Ong Bak, showing just how bone-crunchingly intense fight scenes can get when you add knees and elbows into the mix, but unlike idols Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, he has yet to establish a compelling screen personality. The acrobatics are one thing, and Jaa famously insists on doing all of his own stunts without the aid of wires or CGI, but the characters he plays seem slack-jawed and humorless.

On his way to Sydney, where most of the movie takes place, Jaa's character bumps into Jackie Chan in the airport. In that brief cameo, Chan displays more depth than we get from Jaa in the entire movie.

But who else can pull off what Jaa manages to make look so effortless? In one scene, he takes on an entire gang of skateboard and motorcycle hoods in an abandoned warehouse, running up a plate-glass window moments before a raging four-wheeler cracks it into a million pieces. In another, he leaps high enough to kick a runaway bad guy out of a nearby helicopter.

So forget the story and enjoy those cool and great "actions."

[as featured in The Miami Herald]