Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.0

Legend of the Tsunami Warrior Blu-ray Movie Review

Fails to make waves.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater May 17, 2010

First off, let’s get one thing clear. If you go into Legend of the Tsunami Warrior expecting to see at least one massive tidal wave of unstoppable aquatic destruction, something akin to the skyscraper high breakers in The Day After Tomorrow or 2012, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. I’m not sure what the film’s original Thai title, Puen yai jon salad, literally translates to in English—it sounds like a healthy and delicious entrée at your local Thai joint —but I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with tsunamis. This is a reasonable guess considering that there are no tidal waves in this movie whatsoever. If the film were to be titled after what the titular warrior actually does, it would be called The Legend of the Warrior Who Can Telepathically Control Fish. Not as catchy, admittedly, but infinitely more accurate. So, no tidal waves, mmmkay? What you get instead is a chimeric hybrid of Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars, and Ong Bak 2.

The Tsunam Warrior, sans tsunami.

But wait. If that descriptor sets your geeky heart aflutter—pirates, The Force, high-flying martial arts—then you’re in for your second disappointment of the day. While Legend of the Tsunami Warrior contains elements of all three films, in total it’s nothing more than a muddled historical fantasy—unfocused, needlessly complicated, and overlong. When it comes down to it, the plot synopsis is fairly simple, despite the constantly convoluted exposition. The three ruling sister-queens of Langasuka find their kingdom under assault from a dastardly price who wants to take their territory. Said prince has employed a pirate named Black Raven to do his dirty bidding— attempted assassination, kidnapping, and general mayhem. To aid in the taking of Langasuka, Black Raven and his crew of pirate thugs are hunting for an enormous sunken cannon that was built by a Dutch “cannon master” and lost to the sea some twenty years prior. There’s a drawn out flashback sequence about this Dutch guy’s Chinese apprentice, who survives the shipwreck that sunk the cannon and lives in a Thai village, where he invents the hang glider and scuba flippers, much to the bemusement of the local snot-nosed children. One of these curious youths is our story’s “chosen one,” a kid with nascent powers in the practice of “Du Lum.”

What is Du Lum, you ask? Well, as the film explains in far too much detail, it’s an art with “three major levels and nine sublevels”—we get to hear all about each—that allows the practitioner to “read the minds of fish” and then “command fish to do what you want them to, even attack your enemy.” Basically, nothing we haven’t seen Aquaman do. Pari (Ananda Everingham), our hero and the hopeful savior of Langasuka, has a few decent powers though, from screaming underwater really loudly to summoning whales. Exciting, right? And, of course, he’s always surrounded by giant stingrays. Presumably, this is because Pari’s master is a wily-haired wizard named White Ray. There’s also a dark sage named—you guessed it—Black Ray, and these two are immortally locked into a yin yang struggle for mystical Du Lum dominance. At one point, White Ray literally warns Pari about the dangers of “the dark side of the Force,” making him the Obi Wan to Pari’s Luke. There are other Star Wars parallels too. Black Raven can do the crazy Jedi Force push—shooting some kind of invisible, enemy-toppling energy out of his palm—and one of the princesses dresses in ridiculous gold-plated armor, making her a visual stand-in for C-3PO. (Check out the screenshot below.) This probably isn’t intentional, but it most certainly is unintentionally funny. The film takes itself pretty damn seriously for a movie about a guy who rides around on the back of a stingray.

The attempt here is to create a Thai fantasy epic, filled with magic and swordplay, costume drama and martial arts, but Tsunami Warrior is dead in the water, soggy with unneeded narrative complications and bloated by a running time that could easily be cut by twenty, maybe thirty minutes. There are also way too many names and faces to remember. Many epics add gratuitous action to pad out the story; Tsunami Warrior indulges in an unnecessarily large cast. Characters are often introduced solely to serve plot-altering purposes within the story, and there’s no real development, not even with the protagonists. (I should also say here that aside from Ananda Everingham’s performance, the acting is cringe-worthy across the board.) As a result, the movie feels weightless and inconsequential, a rote exercise in fantasy film cliché that follows the basic outline of Joseph Campbell’s definition of the “hero’s journey,” but lacks any substance or heart. This could be somewhat excusable if the film went all out for big-budget spectacle, but the combo of martial arts ‘n’ magic never really impresses as much as it has in other films. There are a few decent action sequences—naval battles, a cave siege, some over-the- top wire-fu theatrics—but we’ve seen it all before, and we’ve seen it done better. When compared to the Tony Jaa-starring blockbusters that have recently put Thai film on the international stage— or successful fantasy franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean—Legend of the Tsunami Warrior is unfortunately watered down.

Legend of the Tsunami Warrior Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Legend of the Tsunami Warrior doesn't exactly make a splash on Blu-ray—I promise, I've exhausted my supply of water-related puns—but the film's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer is a passable, even occasionally impressive Blu-ray experience if you keep two things in mind. 1.) You've seen better special effects and CGI in video games; some of the digitally supplemented vistas are painfully artificial, and much of the computer generated imagery has a flat, low-res look that lacks fine detail. 2.) This isn't a Hollywood blockbuster, so temper your expectations accordingly. On the whole, though, and given the Thai film industry's current capabilities, Tsunami Warrior looks good—it's just a bit inconsistent. Almost everything about this transfer is mixed. Sometimes the image is sharply resolved, with plenty of detail visible in facial texture and the intricately wrought plates of Thai armor, and other times the picture is slightly soft. Color can be remarkably vivid, with bright costumes, warm skintones, and deep sea blues, or somewhat washed out. The same goes for black levels, which can be spot-on during daytime scenes, or hazy and too dark when we venture into the film's many cave sequences. Grain fluctuates as well, from fine and unobtrusive to moderately noisy. On the plus side, apart from some very minor banding in two or three subtle color gradients, I didn't notice any compression problems or other transfer-related issues.

Legend of the Tsunami Warrior Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Like many of Magnolia Home Entertainment's recent Asian film releases—which carry native language tracks and English dubs—Tsunami Warrior has two audio options, both in the form of lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround tracks. Stay away, if at all possible, from the exceptionally cheesy English overdub, which makes the dialogue even more ridiculous than it already is. (The film defaults to this option, so head into the menu or get ready to hit the "audio" button on your remote.) The Thai language track is much better, but, as with the picture quality, the results here are mixed. Surround speaker usage is inconsistently applied, but there are definitely some effective moments, like during the big battle scenes, which erupt with cross-channel cannon fire and gunshots that ping every which way. During the quieter scenes, you'll occasionally hear some seaside ambience—gulls squawking, lapping water, gurgling bubbles, etc. Dynamically, the audio feels like it could use a bit more heft. There's some modest LFE rumble during a few heated action beats, but in general the film needs a more powerful low-end and a more robust middle, especially to sell the gunfire and other sound effects. Dialogue is well balanced in the mix, but it doesn't always sound as clean as it could/should, with a slightly muffled quality that occasionally swallows up the crispness of the voices. This isn't a bad mix by any means, but don't expect anything particularly impressive.

Legend of the Tsunami Warrior Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Making of Legend of the Tsunami Warrior (SD, 9:12)
Director Nonee Nimibutr explains the premise and discusses the film's mix of action and fantasy, and a few of the actors give some very brief thoughts. The most salient factoid we learn here is that main actor Ananda Everingham—our titular Tsunami Warrior—could hold his breath for three and half minutes underwater by the time the shoot finished. Really, a more impressive feat that just about anything we see in the movie.

Behind the Scenes Footage (SD, 5:04)
Five minutes of non-narrated, on-set B-roll footage.

Also From Magnolia Home Entertainment (1080p, 6:16)
Includes trailers for Red Cliff, District 13: Ultimatum, and The Warlords.

Legend of the Tsunami Warrior Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

To reiterate: there are no tsunamis in Legend of the Tsunami Warrior. The disappointment doesn't end there, though. While the film tries desperately to follow in the wake of other, better fantasy epics—Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean—it flounders through a needlessly complicated plot, undeveloped characters, and merely mediocre action. Fans of the emerging southeast Asian action cinema scene may want to give Tsunami Warrior a rental, but all others are advised to move to higher cinematic ground.