Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

KineticSeoul So this is basically a sequel to "Ong Bak 2" which wasn't a good movie. This one is way more slow with it's pacing in a very irrelevant manner. It's like the makers forgot they are making a martial arts movie or something. I know they planned for the 3rd installment while making the 2nd. But if they combined 2 and 3 and cut out all the bull crap scenes it would have probably been a good movie. Instead they probably wanted to fill in the running time because it has to be at least an hour and 30 minutes long. So they filled it with boring and dragged out stuff. You have to actually sit through more than an hour of rubbish to get to some fight sequences. Even the cover on the DVD is a lie. Most of the running time of this flick is taken up with the recovery of Tien(Tony Jaa), meditation, dancing and curses and it's so darn dragged out and boring. It's just not a good story for one movie. What is irritating is how the main villain Rajasena gets cut off that was kinda built up from the 2nd movie and some irrelevant character named Bhuti that came out of nowhere takes his spot. When Tien built his vengeance for that other villain Rajasena and doesn't doesn't even know much about this Bhuti. If he faced Rajasena at the end at least Tien's actions would have been a bit more meaningful. Just skip to the last fight scene cause that is the only thing that is worth seeing in this movie. Petchtai Wongkamlao is also in this and he was very slightly comedic and irrelevant like he was in "Ong Bak 2" but at least he was slightly comedic although he didn't make me laugh or nothing.4.5/10

bob the moo After watching this film I went back and read my user comment for Ong Bak 2, just to remind myself what I thought of it. What I found was that I had praised the action but said almost every other aspect was weaker than it should have been; it is a user comment I could pretty much copy/paste here and just right the word "very" anytime I see the words "weak" or "poor". In short Ong Bak 3 is a massive disappointment across the board, but amazingly doesn't even really have the action sequences to make the casual viewer forgive it.Let's start with the plot just to get it out of the way – which is coincidentally just how the film treats the plot, an inconvenience to be gotten out of the way with the minimal amount of fuss. As a result we get something so thin that I cannot even be bothered to describe it but suffice to say you will not care about any of it. Of course a lack of plot in a film that we all came to in order to see people kicked into the air is not a real issue, but unfortunately the plot vacuum is delivered slowly and with a constant mystical air of worthiness that it cannot make work and does not need or deserve.The lack of plotting means we do not care about the characters and of course the cast have little to work with in that regard. In fairness, I did watch a dubbed version so it is hard to gauge the performances, but on the other hand at times there was so little dialogue that I forgot it was dubbed (although the American dubbing is 1980's-tastic in its cheesiness). Jaa remains unable to do much as an actor except the physical, he has a presence in that way but nothing else. Comic-relief Wongkamlao doesn't seem to fit in the film but is put in there anyway and is poor. The bad guys are generally weak and indeed the crow-king character is just silly without any real sense of threat or presence (a couple of good moves though).Speaking of moves, this film's biggest disappointment is that the fight sequences are so very dull. The large set-pieces are all about locations and numbers but in terms of Jaa and the other leads, there are almost no moves or sequences that made me gasp or thrilled me. This is a problem since this is the point of this type of film. Instead we get fights that are mostly "OK" but nothing more than this; they don't cover for the poor plot and they certainly don't make up for long "training" sequences that feel like they are there purely to fill time (which of course they are).One could argue that viewers of Ong Bak 3 should know what they are getting, but I don't buy that. The potential to make a great film with someone as physically able as Jaa is still there and yet again it is wasted. The plot is non-existent, the characters likewise and too many of the scenes just feel like they are there to fill time. The action is workmanlike in the main and this is the biggest problems – Jaa has amazed me in the past, here he simply bored me and I yet again look at his film and wonder what his career aspirations are and why his people aren't trying to get him into films much better than this one.

Leofwine_draca There's no two ways about it: ONG BAK 3 is a mess of a film and one, I hate to say, that never should have been made. The previous entry in this historical twosome (the first ONG BAK was a low budget martial arts flick set on the streets of modern-day Bangkok) was a bit of a mixed bag of a film that I enjoyed for the most part. In comparison to this, ONG BAK: THE BEGINNING is a masterpiece of cinema. If only they'd had Jaa kill the main bad guy at the end of that film and spare us this unwanted final entry in the series, which is also, according to some, Jaa's swansong following his decision to retire from the industry and become a monk.The film's plot is all over the place. Jaa starts the film captured, tortured and left for dead. Long stretches of over-stylised posturing follow before – surprise, surprise – Jaa is 'reborn' and comes back fresher and stronger than before to battle the enemy again. By this time, the second film's villain has been bumped off by Dan Chupong's villainous "Crow" character, who should have stayed a bird-man rather than undergoing the nonsense we see his character involved in here.It all ends with a large-scale spectacle involving mucho weaponry, spear-play and elephants, but then silly twists are played out (one extended fight scene turns out to be purely imaginary) and the climatic one-on-one bout is a crushing disappointment. It's obvious that the filmmakers went too far in their attempts at creating a historical epic, whereas they should have stuck to the gritty, on-the-street vibe that made both the original ONG BAK and WARRIOR KING such smashing films. Sure, there are a handful of decent fight sequences in this one, all with the usual exemplary choreography, but the rest of the movie is a chore to sit through. This a film guaranteed to test the patience of even the most forgiving martial arts fan.

samurray110750 First, I have been a rabid fan of Tony Jaa since the first Ong Bak, and I've watched every one of his films since then. I told every action film buff that I know that here is the successor to Bruce, Jet, and Jackie. It's fascinating to watch this highly physical, full contact method of filming fight scenes. Combining his martial arts expertise with his natural athleticism is something to watch! BUT, I get the fact that he wants to make films that entertain his Thai fans so we get doses of history and religion that are completely meaningless to anyone except those audiences (I don't mean to insult anyone). I've read that he's expressed a desire to be a worldwide film star and he must realize that the more views of local-interest-only that he incorporates in his movies, the more people he's going to leave behind. He is increasing in this area rather than maintaining a fine balance, which he did in the first Ong Bak and Tom Yum Goong. I could not sit through Ong Bak 3. After an hour of incredible boredom I shut it down. I knew that there would be some big-time fighting to end the film but I no longer cared. I believe that Tony is going to have to choose between maintaining his comfort zone, working with all the same familiar people in every film, or taking a chance and doing a movie where he doesn't control everything. Bruce started it, Jackie and Jet make films all over the world, and Tony is going to have to follow if he wants to grow. I believe that he has the ability and presence to be one of the greats, and I hope he takes the chance.