Wow, this movie looks GOOD. (200 war elephants in the battles!)

[Osceola]

The Legend of Suriyothai.

I havent seen this movie, but I'm now making it a priority to! I was just browsing through a list of movie trailers, and found it.

It's a historical film about a Warrior Queen named Suriyothai, and it apparently takes place in 1500's Siam (Thailand).

I was reading about it here, it's says the movie used over 5,000 extras for the battles and around 200 war elephants! Talk about realism! The violence is not eidted, there are plenty of beheadings in this one, so the realism has been pushed to the extreme. Highly historically accurate, it even shows the Siamese army making use of Portugese mercenaries! So far every review I've read about it has had nothing but praise for it, I mean, I've never been interested in Siam, but after seeing that trailer, I hafta say I most certainly am now!

Heres the amazon review:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...91134?v=glance

And heres the trailer:

http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1808406117

(click on the picture to see the trailer)

Who else is as interested as me, or has seen this movie?

[lionskin]

I've seen this movie. Dont waste your money. Probably the worst acting i've ever seen, and the battle scenes are quite funny, all you see are dudes running around, there even a scene where one soldier kinda starts laughing while charging. Its pretty bad IMHO.

[antaeus]

yeah, theres some pretty hammy acting... it is revolutionary however as its a reasonbly large budgeted film pretty much entirely put together in thailand.

some of the battle scenes were good, and the storyline was strong - as long as you dont mind subtitles, but the one thing that got to me was the way their elephants acted. they would have a huge battle scene with thousands of extras, and a bunch of elephants slowly and happily plodding through the scene. war elephants did not plod! - also the infantry fighting around them seemed pretty oblivious to their presence. if there was a war elephant near me - or over 200 of them, swing its tusks about goring people and throwing them 5 meters in the air... i wouldnt be sticking around.

the elephants in alexander were much more fearsome, but perhaps thats the difference between using one or 2 well trained elephants and a lot of cgi, as they did in alexander... and using 200 elephants that were mostly docile working elephants and not trained for the movie other than walking where told.

in real history the thais avoided using working elephants in war as they simply didnt have the state of mind for it. they used either specially trained war elephants or ones captured recently and broken in. so that they still had a little wild animal in them.

watch it anyway... it is visually beautiful.

[wilpuri]

If you thought Suriyothai was good, you guys should check out Bang Rajan.
I just love it when Thailand goes hollywood