Raging Phoenix

From the producers of ‘Ong Bak’ and ‘Warrior King’ comes the latest hard-hitting martial arts sensation, ‘Raging Phoenix’. Action cinema’s undisputed kick-ass babe, Jija Janin, stars in the title role in this adrenalin induced Thai action flick. More precisely, she stars as Neu, a drifter and rock ‘n’ roll drummer who, abandoned by family and sacked from her band, finds herself pursued by a bunch of kidnappers. Well, her rage has to be triggered somehow. Still, luck seems to be on her side when the mysterious Sanim rescues her. He is the master of a drunken fighting technique called Mayraiyuth that combines elements of Muay Thai boxing with drunken boxing and hip-hop dance moves (don’t try this at home – especially not in a drunken state!).

From that point, it’s not only non-stop action that kicks in, but a plot as well. It involves the group of aforementioned kidnappers and Neu finally comes to understand why she was and still is a target: the gang kidnap young women to extract their pheromones to sell as a potent aphrodisiac on the black market. Naturally, Neu won’t have any of this nonsense and Sanim and his three sidekicks – Pigshit, Dogshit and Bullshit – teach her their unique self-defence combat techniques. Having infiltrated the criminals lair, not only are they confronted with the thugs but find out the hard way that the gang is lead by a she-boss even more evil than the whole organisation put together….

‘Raging Phoenix’ is perfect fodder for lovers of martial arts flicks and rest assured there’s combat action aplenty. However, at times the non-stop action seems to suffocate the plot to such extend that one almost stops caring as to what happens next.
The film is in Thai with English subtitles, and the DVD comes with hi-impact extras.