My Review of "Chocolate (2008)"

Chocolate (2008) is a Thai martial arts movie that I don't think a lot of people know about. It's pretty low budget but I can tell they put a lot of love, blood and sweat making this movie. This can start off a little bit slow though.

It all starts out with the introduction of our characters. We start off with Zin and Masashi. The two of them are organized criminals. They're pretty much soldiers for bigger organizations. Zin works within the Thai mafia and Masashi works within the Japanese mafia.

During a really tense scene the two get into a forbidden love where they eventually get found out. As they're in Thailand Zin's boss catches wind of Zin's sordid affair and refuses to accept it. He threatens the couple and somehow they're able to get away from the whole situation under certain conditions. Zin is to live a regular life while Masashi has to go back to Japan.

They part ways and Zin gives birth to our hero Zen who happens to be autistic. Zen's autism is quite severe but she's also has some sort of special ability to mimic body movements. As she loves martial arts movies she's somehow teaches herself to learn from all the movies and games around her.

Eventually Zin gets sick and to pay for Zin's medical bills, Zen and her friend Moon start performing on the streets. Zen's ability to mimic movements also extends to spatial awareness apparently. Soon they start go push the limits of their abilities and actions and the old crime boss catches wind of them.

Soon chaos and anarchy starts to chase the small family. They have nothing left to do but fight back. The early introduction of this story is a bit on the long side. I can see what they're trying to do but with such a low budget it feels like a high school play at times.

The real fun of this movie is the action sequences. If you're a fan of martial arts movies you may or may not like the direction they went with the action sequences. To today's standards they can seem quite slow. Though you can't argue with the technical skill required to pull off some of these sequences. I liked the fact that they paid homage to a lot of Asian action movies of the past with some of these sequences. It doesn't take great movie knowledge to see where some of these nods come from.

Some of the nods are a little on the nose though. There are quite a few scenes where I kind of groaned at the cheesiness. Zen has some sort of fear of flies and when this is revealed the next scene has a cheesy song that repeats the word "Flies". It's quite cringe worthy but you have to remember the production value of the movie.

As the movie progresses the action sequences get more and more intense. It's quite spectacular later on. They really get creative with some of the situations they get themselves into. This movie also does a great job in creating wince inducing violent scenes. I felt like I could feel some of the pain that the stunt actors had to endure. This is partially due to the slower nature of the action sequences.

It's also quite noticeable that Zen never actually goes out to kill her opponents. I found this kind of admirable of her character to keep all of her opponents alive despite what they've done to them. Surprisingly I never really had those moments where you're like, "just kill the guy or else he's going to come back after you". I just wanted to see how creative they were going to get with their fight scenes, and boy did they ever get creative.

Overall, I'm glad I stuck through the boring first 2 acts of the movie. The last half of the movie is where it's at. I really got invested in all of the action sequences they added to this movie. This is quite a visual feast for fans of martial arts and movement in general. I have go give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. If only the pacing of the movie would pick up I would have had a different opinion.