Force of Five review (Blu-ray) ★★★

Four young Muay Thai students are minding their own business, learning their martial art and kicking the living crap out of a drunken American dude whenever necessary. One day, the younger brother of one of the kids has a sudden worsening of his heart condition. He is admitted to hospital and a donor is found. But before the transplant operation can take place, a renegade paramilitary unit starts shooting up the hospital for no apparent reason. So obviously the kids, armed with nothing more than their Thai boxing skills and love for their little pal, go in to sort them out.

Yeah, it’s a tough one to figure out how this one’s going to turn out isn’t it? But of course, that’s not the point. Force of Five (although it’s only really four since the fifth one is lying in a hospital bed for the crucial part of the film) is brought to you by the team that produced Ong Bak and The Warrior King so this is very much all about the fighting. There’s no doubt about it, this lot can do action. And because there’s a whole lot of knees going on it looks really tough and nasty. The actors must be pulling their punches a bit but there’s definite contact so it all feels scarily realistic at times.

What’s slightly odd about Force of Five is that none of the kids seem to be as old as the rating (15) so while it’s fun to see these little nippers doing their incredibly impressive stuff on the bad guys, you can’t help wondering that the target audience is younger than those actually allowed to see. Anyway. Although the plot is fairly predictable, there are enough great fighting sequences to keep the martial arts fans happy and a decent enough story for it to be more than simply a load of set pieces strung together. Not bad at all.