"Tom-Yum" backers thank God for the Chinese

Well, Jaa’s female co-stars, Yanin “Jeeja” Vismitananda and Rhatha “Ying” Pho-ngam, plugged the movie throughout its run in the theatres – despite Jeeja also jumping ship at Sahamongkol. Ying meanwhile, under no contract to the studio, was perhaps karmically rewarded for her help by garnering international attention for her subsequent role in “Only God Forgives” and other foreign films shooting in Thailand, among them the big-budget Japanese project “Lupin”.

Both actresses have continued to stick by “Tom-Yum-Goong 2”, most recently when it “opened wide” – very wide – in China, the world’s biggest cinema market. They were on the red carpet at the Beijing International Film Festival and withstood a relentless flood of interviews with mainstream and online media from across the country.

Sahamongkol claims this is the first Thai movie to be cleared for wide release in China. It’s playing at more than 2,500 theatres. We’re not so sure about that because rival studio Five Star Production says Wisit Sasanatieng’s “Insee Dang” (“The Red Eagle”) was the first to go “wide” there, albeit at “only” 200 cinemas.

First or second, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that Thailand has finally cracked the Chinese market.

 

Heaven knows best

Napassakorn Mit-em just didn’t think he’d be comfortable working with such an esteemed film director as MC Chatrichalerm “Than Mui” Yukol. Fellow actors Chatchai Plenpanich and the late Apichat Chusakul talked him into a role in “Suriyothai”, but “I felt like I didn’t know how to act properly in front of him,” Napassakorn says.

Only later did he learn that Than Mui had made some of the favourite films of his youth, like “Uka Fah Luang”. 

Napassakorn subsequently put both movies and TV out of his mind and was appearing onstage in Patravadi Meechudhon’s “Rai Pra Tripidok”. Still, he found himself pining for another Than Mui project, “so I started praying”. In fact he was chanting prayers and burning 15 joss sticks every day. And, on the 15th day, God answered, or at least someone like him. Than Mui had two of his assistant directors check out the stage play and they approached Napassakorn afterward to offer him the role of a drummer in “The Legend of King Naresuan”. The role was more prominent than it sounds, but anyway Napassakorn ended up cast as Phra Maha Upparacha, the viceroy prince of the Burmese monarch. Thais know the character better as Mang Sam Kiat or Minyekyawswa, the childhood friend of Naresuan who grew up to be his enemy, facing off with him in battle astride elephants.

His prayers answered, his dream come true, Napassakorn had to train for the action scenes, including riding a horse and wielding a halberd in armour weighing more than 30 kilograms. Even suiting up required special techniques so that the weight of the armour was properly distributed and wouldn’t injure him. “I wore it every day, until I could run in that suit,” he says. 

Then came his first day on the set, an ornately re-created Burmese throne hall. “Suddenly the whole set went completely black. Than Mui told me to light a candle and pay my respects before we could begin work.” Napassakorn figures that he was singled out for the ritual because he hadn’t been among the cast when a worship ceremony was held when production first began, an elaborate event that even had Her Majesty the Queen presiding.