Thai Blu-Ray Movies Report

April 26 2009, 2:37am

Blu-ray and Thai films: The current status of Thai Movies available on Blu-ray is a bit sad to be honest. Although I am confident that I will have more to report on in the future concerning Blu-rays, at the moment there is really just a handful of Thai Blu-ray movies available at the moment. Besides that, not all titles have English soundtracks or even English subtitles. Below you'll find links and info on the Thai film Blu-rays that you can buy currently:

Of course, the first Blu-rays that were made available were the Tony Jaa flicks. That makes sense, as Tony was the one who made Thai films much better known in the past years with his Ong-Bak movie and other action movies that followed afterward. Ong-Bak itself is available on Blu-ray but currently only a French version which only has French subtitles and a French soundtrack. You can get the French Ong-Bak Blu-ray here.

Ong-Bak 2 is still pretty new, it was just recently released on DVD (2, 3). At the moment, only a German Blu-ray version of Ong-Bak 2 is planned to be released on the 29th of May. It is not clear yet if an English version will follow.

Another Tony Jaa Movie that can be bought on Blu-ray is "The Protector" aka Tom Yam Goong. There is a German version where it's called Revenge of the Warrior. The French version is called L'honneur du dragon.

The last Tony Jaa movie that is available on Blu-ray (and in a US version) is Hard Gun, not his best, but at least something. The US Blu-ray version of Hard Gun can be bought here.

A great movie on Blu-ray is Chocolate, produced by the same man who made On-Bak, Prachya Pinkaew. Shooting star Jeeja is fantastic in this one and you can get the official US version of Chocolate here. There is also an UK Chocolate Blu-ray and a German version.

Let's sum up what else is available in French:

There is the action comedy The Bodyguard 2 on Blu-ray which also features Tony Jaa for a couple minutes. There is Horror movie Ghost Game, "Boxers" which is known to most as Muay Thai Chaiya.

Furthermore we have Opapatika, which is fairly new and a Horror/Black Magic/Action/Slasher which had lots of gore in the original Thai DVD version. You can get the French Blu-ray of Opapatika here. And finally the movie "The Victim" is also available on french Blu-ray.

The French seem to be the most lucky ones, getting the most Blu-ray releases of Thai movies. Germans are also pretty well off. besides the above mention Thai movies, you can also get a German Blu-ray of Born to Fight (a great action move with amazing stunts that features Dan Chupong of Dynamite Warrior). Also available on a German language Blu-ray is Muay Thai Chaiya, also very recommendable.

Now we come to what's available in English besides the above mentioned movies Chocolate and Hard Gun:

First of all I want to mention a movie called P: The Possessed. This movie was released in the year 2005 and directed by Paul Spurrier. It was released to cinemas in a couple countries but only Australia has seen an English sub release on DVD. troubles with the distribution company had the director himself decided to run a small scale production of the movie himself on Blu-ray and sell them himself over a website. So at the moment you can still get a special Blu-ray copy of P: The Possessed on this website. Special feature of the Blu-ray is a 114 minutes "Director's Scrapbook" with loads of guides, commentaries, a remastered trailer in HD etc.

The 3 other Thai movies with Blu-ray versions in English are Tiger Blade Blu-ray, Vengeance Blu-ray, and finally the remake of Bangkok Dangerous with Nicholas Cage. For the latter i still have to say though that the original version of Bangkok Dangerous is better.

One more movie that could be mentioned here is the Blu-ray of the movie Re-Cycle as it was directed by the Pang brothers. They are Hong Kong born directors that made and still make many movies in Thailand and some productions, even though they are Chinese movies, use the same production team and other staff than for the Thai movies. So you'll find this movie in some lists of Thai movies even though the actors and movie language is Chinese.

So now you understand what i meant when saying there is not much available yet. Let's hope this will change. i will keep an eye on new releases and report on Bangkok1080 once new material is available.