28th STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. DAY 4, NOV 11th 2017. Swedish premiere.

A Cambodian martial arts action flick with confidence, dedication and adrenaline. Shot on low budget, the film crew had to be very inventive.

"Because of budget restrain, (actor/stuntman) Jean-Paul (Ly) had to train 75 local background artists for the fight scenes. Most of them had no prior experience in martial arts, or even sports. It took 6 weeks, 6 hours per week-end to make them ready. The stunt coordinator, Jammy Chhun, helped managing the courses with his team." From the trivia at IMDb.

This is a poor man's Raid in a way but that's not bad. If you're expecting plot twists and character development and decent acting and writing you're watching the wrong film. If you're expecting bone crunching action in the same way as Ong-Bak or Raid or similar films then you're in for a treat.

This film introduces the Cambodian martial art of bokator and it's very good in all action aspects. Surely the plot and dialogue leave a lot to be desired but the action is phenomenal for what seems to be a really low budget film. The choreography is exceptional and although the realism in terms of much people are being beaten up and stabbed and so forth and how quickly they get is not proportional I didn't find it bad.

In many ways this seems like a demo tape going to a producer saying, hey this is what we can do with pennies. Give us a bigger budget and we'll produce something even more awesome. And I sure hope so!

ps. I was impressed by Katsumi's martial arts prowess, you go girl!