Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior (2003)

One of the great things about modern martial arts movies (and by modern, I mean post-1984, more or less), is that they have all the same silly plot tropes (fight in a restaurant; fight in a crowded marketplace; fight on a dock; etc.) but way better cinematography, PLUS cool video game music. Ong-Bak distinguishes itself even from the modern pack by adding instant replay for extra-specially awesome moves, which was especially useful to me as I was watching it because I was feeding it from Netflix to the TV, so the only remote control is the mouse, which I can't reach from the couch, so no rewinding to watch dope muay thai hits over and over again the way I do when I Tivo Bloodsport.

Anyway, Ong-Bak starts with a whole bunch of shirtless dudes covered in dried mud and standing around a big baobab-type tree, completely still, while crazy, arrhythmic drum music plays, and it's a long enough shot, and the scene is just trippy enough, that you think maybe this is more of a Crouching Tiger sort of kung fu movie, in the sense that it is upscale and meaningful. Then you see that there is an orange flag protruding from the top of the big tree, and then all the muddy guys holler and start running at the tree and climbing up ferociously, and they're pulling one another off and making each other fall, and sometimes as they fall the smack into lower branches, and they always end up landing in the mud with a sickening thud, and the whole thing is just surreal. Then one especially catlike guy gets the flag, ties it around his chest in the smart, impossibly quick way that kung fu people seem to have of always knowing how to secure unwieldy items for carrying-while-fighting, and proceeds to hop, skip, and jump his way down the tree, dispatching some other muddy guys on the way - not by hitting them, mind you, but with gentle pushes (as much as any push that sends a guy careening out of a tree can be gentle (see A Separate Peace)), and finally he lands on the ground, holds the orange flag up above his head, and the camera pans around to show a disheveled, dusty village-worth of people looking on apprehensively, and then someone says, "Ting has won this year's contest!" and they all cheer. Ladies and gentlemen, WE HAVE A PROTAGONIST.

So Ting (no relation to the Jamaican soda, as best I can tell) is just a regular Thai country boy from the little village of Nong Pradu. The contest is connected to a big festival that happens every 24 years and is important for alleviating droughts (we will later learn). Everyone's happy about the festival and good times seem to prevail in the village. If this were a Jean Claude Van Damme movie, there would also be a part as Ting walks around the village where he catches the eye of young lady and you kind of understand that he's the village champ, she's ready to roll, and he pretty much has a good life laid out for him. That doesn't happen in Ong-Bak, but Ting is still clearly a stand-up guy. Conveniently, he is also really good at Muay Thai, which is pretty much Thai for kung-fu, but in the translation from Chinese, a lot of chops and punches get turned into hits with elbows and knees. Naturally, he has been trained really really well (we see him do one of those routines where he does a series of moves and says the name of each one, but again, the translation from Chinese to Thai turns animal kingdom reference names like "monkey chases snake" to Buddhist/Hindu myth reference names like "Hanuman visits Lanka"), but has never ever actually fought and never will, which we learn when his old-ass monk trainer says, "I have taught you Muay Thai and you have learned it well; now you must never use it," and Ting is like "Yes, master," and the viewer is like, "Um, no master, because otherwise this would be the boringest movie ever." Right there, though, we know that this will be a Reluctant Hero type of film.

Luckily, it is not a Reluctant Plot Advancement type of film, because the next scene shows a cocky young city guy arrive in Nong Pradu and try to buy some amulet from some old dude. The city guy, named Don, clearly really wants the amulet, and offers 200,000 baht ($6,055 US, according to Google). The country guy is phlegmatic like country people are the world over and insists the amulet is not for sale, because he's saving it for his son when his son becomes a monk. He says, "I never told you I'd sell it." Don is like, "Well, call me when you change your mind," and the country guy walks away, saying, "I don't have a phone," which makes you wonder how Don ever found his way to Nong Pradu and managed to get even this far in his fruitless negotiations. Meanwhile, the orange flag that Ting retrieved has been tied around Ong-Bak, the village Buddha, and that night, for reasons not entirely clear, Don breaks into the temple, snuffs some old guy who hears him prowling about, and cuts off Ong-Bak's head before absconding with said head to Bangkok.

It won't surprise you to learn that the village is devastated and that after some perfunctory wailing and fate-cursing, someone says, "We need Ong-Bak back to do our festival," and an old lady with a bouffant hairdo that is startling for its perfection, given the setting, starts wailing about how the village is doomed, and some other guy sternly asks, "How will we get Ong-Bak's head back from Don?" AND GUESS WHO VOLUNTEERS? YOU ARE RIGHT IT IS TING!! The village gives him all the money they have, his uncle gives him a letter to carry to his cousin Hum Lae (who had, apparently, set out some time earlier for the big time), and various other trinkets are given to him and placed in his shoulder bag for the journey. The he rides off on the back of a truck.

Suddenly, we cut from Thai Pastoral to a slickly filmed urban scene with club music and people betting on street motorcycle racing. A race finishes and a chunky guy with close-cropped, dyed blonde hair (like Sisqo used to have) takes off his helmet in disgust because the other, still helmeted racer, has beaten him. Then the racer unhelmets and reveals that SHE is A GIRL, and much indignation is displayed by Sisqo. Then Sisqo and the girl racer argue with some sort of gangster guy in aviator shades about prize money. The girl racer storms off, pointedly bumping her shoulder against Sisqo's, but somehow aviator shades gangster man knows that Sisqo and the girl are in cahoots, so after the girl is gone, he and his goons beat up Sisqo and don't give him some money he thought he was entitled to, explaining that he actually owes more money to aviator shades man, and Sisqo pleads for just enough money to gamble with, and in this way we learn he is a chronic and compulsive gambler. What we do not understand is WHO THE HELL IS HE AND HOW WILL HE ADVANCE TING'S QUEST FOR ONG-BAK?

All in good time, my friends. All in good time.

So Sisqo, whose name, we learn, is George (naturally), meets up with the girl motorcycle racer (and I'm not being sexist and infantilizing here - she looks youthful, maybe sixteen or seventeen) and they argue about how he didn't collect from their motorcycle racing scam (the nature of which I don't understand) and how he's the one who always takes the beatings. Then Ting shows up and he goes to George/Sisqo and is like, "Hey Hum Lae, what's poppin' bro? I come with bad news from Nong Pradu," and George Sisqo Hum Lae is like, "I don't know you, son," because he's George now, get it? He's left that country living behind for the fast living, periodic beatings, and low-grade criminality for which we have all come to love Bangkok. Ting, naturally, is naively insistent, girl partner thinks the whole thing is hilarious, and eventually Hum Lae realizes Ting has money in his shoulder bag and invites him to stay at the apartment.

Of course, Hum Lae is a reprobate, so he urges Ting to have a shower and immediately takes the money from Ting's bag and goes to a fight club - no, not the Fight Club for which the first rule is "don't talk about Fight Club"; the one for which the only rule is "come place bets on dudes beating the tar out of each other while video game music plays, sexy waitresses do weird dances, and a ruthless gangster in a wheelchair who talks with one of those tracheotomy robot voice machines watches from a second floor balcony and places enormous bets on each fight with another gangster, who is constantly giggling and being massaged by two ladies" (it's a comprehensive rule). We (and Ting) know that Hum Lae has gone to this place because while Ting is showering, he says on the phone that he will meet somebody at the place. So then he rides off on his motorbike, Ting comes out angrily and finds his loot looted, and then we cut to the afforementioned den of iniquity.

Hum Lae seems to be known by the bet-taker at the fight club, who sneers at him. When he arrives, a fight is ongoing and one guy is really pummeling some other guy. The pummeller, we learn, is called (disappointingly, I think) "Ali," because Hum Lae says to the sneering bet-taker, "Is there still time to place a bet on Ali?" There is, Hum Lae does, and wouldn't you know it, the white guy he's pummelling suddenly comes alive and vanquishes him, prompting Hum Lae to make a sad sack face. Just then, Ting finds the place and asks Hum Lae where his money is at, and Hum Lae sadly explains that he has lost it, pointing to the bet-takers little booth. Ting, being painfully naive, makes to walk across the open fight area to the booth and ask for his money back, but he gets immediately conscripted to fight the white guy who just beat Ali, who, by the way, looks kind of like that magician/hipster stuntman David Blaine. The ringmaster, who looks like a scrunched up, miniature Mr. T (not because of a mohawk and gold jewelry, both of which he lacks, but because he just looks like him), announces the fight and asks Ting what his name is. Ting says the country thing to say, which is "Ting, from Nong Pradu," which Mini T changes to "The Pradu Legend." The tracheotomy-robot-voice gangster quickly gives his giggly friend three-to-one odds on Ting, which bet the giggler takes, and then David Blaine comes charging at Ting and Ting knocks him out with a single punch, which is awesome as far as I'm concerned, and as far as Hum Lae is concerned, but causes the crowd to boo, because first-round knockouts are BOOOOOORING. To add more naivete to injury, Ting won't except the wad of prize money and insists instead on getting his actual money (far less, mind you) back from the bet-taker, which he does.

I forgot to mention that while Hum Lae was placing his losing bet on Ali, we saw Don show up in Tracheotomy Robot Gangster's area and tell him how the old guy wouldn't sell the amulet, so Don brought back the head of the village Buddha instead, and at that point he opens a large briefcase to display the head. Tracheotomy Robot Gangster has a totally reasonable reaction, which is, "What the fuck am I supposed to do with a stone Buddha head," and Don - who also looks a little like David Blaine - slinks away sheepishly.

The next day (or some subsequent day), we see Hum Lae stroll into a gambling hall, but not with fighting, just a card-playing place, and the proprietor is like, "George, where you been? I've been short-staffed!" and Hum Lae is like, "Oh, you know, doing my thing," and the proprietor is like, "Come deal at this table so I can play," and Hum Lae does it and sends off the dealer who was there with some pithy insult. Then we see that, while he seems like an incompetent gambler and con man when it comes to scams involving motorcycle races and aviator shades-wearing gangsters, Hum Lae can really handle a deck of cards. He does all those cool shuffling tricks and then deals, and the proprietor immediately wins, then wins again, and we see that Hum Lae is dealing from the bottom of the deck (I mean, we don't see it, but it becomes clear to us). Then Hum Lae's partner in crime, the Girl Wonder, walks in and sits down at the table to play. She starts winning every hand, and the proprietor is bugging out, but he doesn't suspect Hum Lae, only the girl. They're playing some kind of blackjack-esque game, but the idea is to get a total of eight from two cards (although there may be some subtraction involved), and Girl Wonder keeps getting eight, and finally the proprietor waits till Hum Lae has dealt, then says for everyone to leave their cards on the table. He says Girl Wonder has beat him fifteen times in a row, and if she has eight again, he'll know she's cheating. So they look at her cards and she does not have eight (she has a nine and a four, and Hum Lae says, "she has five"), so the proprietor looks a little foolish, and Hum Lae makes a big show of kicking Girl Wonder out (she keeps her winnings), and it seems like the perfect con. The we see Hum Lae meet up with Girl Wonder in an alley to divvy up the loot, and they argue, and the aviator shades gangster sees them, and he and his thugs come over and take all the money and then start gratuitously beating Hum Lae, AND WOULDN'T YOU KNOW IT, ALONG COMES TING. He saves Hum Lae using the bare minimum of awesome muay thai moves (he doesn't go in for the Steven Seagal-style bone breaks or anything), and they meander off. Soon, though, the vanquished aviator shades guy finds them and he has a ton of thugs with him, so Hum Lae, Girl Wonder, and Ting start running away IN A BUSTLING MARKETPLACE!!!

Here, in no particular order, are some of the awesome things that happen during the lengthy chase, which inexplicably includes among the chasing thugs the card shop proprietor from the previous scene:

• Ting jumps over and/or through a lot of stuff, including pushcarts, tables covered in flour (or maybe cocaine), passing bicycles (Ting actually jumps through space between the rider and the box on his rear rack), two workmen conveniently carrying a large coil of barbed wire that makes a circle about three feet in diameter (for this one, Ting eschews the obvious headfirst dive followed by a roll and instead jumps up and passes through the circle of barbed wire with his feet and hands extended straight in front of him and his head tucked down), and two parallel pieces of plate glass.
• Ting does a headspin (the breakdancing move) on a table while surrounded by thugs, and as he spins around he kicks them all.
• Ting several times finds himself faced down by a whole lot of thugs, and rather than fight them all, he runs at them, then jumps up and runs along their heads and shoulders to make his getaway.
• Ting does goes from a full-out run to doing the splits while sliding along the ground in order to pass under a moving SUV.
• Hum Lae throws handfuls of hot chili powder at his pursuers, which they do not like at all.
• No one is made to pay for any of the products they casually use or destroy, even when the thugs steal all the knives from an old lady selling knives.

Eventually, Girl Wonder slips away somewhere while Ting and Hum Law end up in a dead end alley with a high wall, which Ting easily scales, leaving Hum Lae to get housed, until Hum Lae promises to help Ting find Don and return Ong-Bak to their village, at which point Ting lifts him to the safety of an adjoining balcony, whence they make their get away while the thugs angrily throw pieces of wood at them.

Somewhere along the way, and I don't recall exactly where, Ting ends up back at the fight club and beats another dude. Here are some neat things about his fighting style:

• He always fakes you out - like, he'll do a high roundhouse kick and his opponent will duck, and you're like, Oh snap, Ting, he read you like the Post on that one, and then HOLY SHIT - Ting's other foot is airborne and comes around and gets the guy right in the neck as he fixing to throw a punch.
• He loves the quadruple axle - he'l go into these flying kicks that take for-fucking-ever to land, and you keep thinking, OK, on this spin he's going to come with the kick, but then he just spins in the air AGAIN, and finally, when you're sure he's out of momentum, BAM! He kicks the guy.
• He likes to climb up on dudes' shoulders and hit them on the top of the head with his elbow, but not the pointy part of his elbow, the part just up from there, going toward his armpit. It doesn't look like the most painful or punishing maneuver, but it straight knocks fighters out.
• He never goes in for the gratuitous hit. When an opponent is on the ground, he just hovers over him with fists raised in muay thai readiness.

OK, so where were we? Ting learns that Don is a drug dealer and that he works (guess where! you're right!) at the fight club. Did I mention that this fight club is patronized by many non-Thai people - white people and black people, all men, who look like frat boys? It is true. I don't know if that's how it is at Bangkok fight clubs, but whatever. Anyway, Ting is prowling the fight club for Don. Meanwhile a guy called "Big Bear" is just beating the bejesus out of other fighters, and in between he insults everybody there in English (because he is Australian and looks like Slash from Guns and Roses) about how muay thai fighting ain't shit and they should try freestyle, or combined, or some such thing, and in between these harangues and ass-kickings, he gropes the waitress, and everybody sees Ting there and they know what a badass he is so they're urging him to take on Big Bear, and he's not having it, to the point where Big Bear grabs some other Thai guy and is on the verge of killing him, and the waitress tries to intervene and Big Bear smacks her, and THAT IS IT. Because when a big white guy smacks a Thai waitress, Ting cannot let it pass. He has a good fight with Big Bear . . . and wins! It's cool when he does his signature climb-up-on-a-guy-and-give-him-an-elbow-to-the-head move because Big Bear is huge and Ting is fairly diminutive. Tracheotomy Robot Gangster bets on Big Bear and loses, to the delight of the giggling gangster. Tracheotomy Robot Gangster also smokes a joint through his tracheotomy hole at one point, which is awesome. He also grabs his tracheotomy voice machine and presses it to his neck for the sole purpose of doing the classical maniacal bad guy laugh, but all robot style. He's a badass. He also looks like an aged and infirm Tom Selleck.

After Ting beats Big Bear, some other fighter steps up and Ting again beats him, although this guy is less brute strength and more technical savvy, which makes for a neater fight. Tracheotomy Robot Gangster loses money on this again, and nods conspiratorially to one of his henchmen, apparently in a way that means, "Arrange for a bunch of other guys to fight Ting until he loses and don't let him just leave." This message is relayed quickly to the fighting floor, where and acne-faced thug who looks sort of like Edward james Olmos except Thai prevents Ting from walking away by pressing a gun discreetly to Ting's gut, obliging Ting to fight some other dudes, whom he defeats, to Tracheotomy Robot Gangster's growing displeasure.

The final showdown of this scene involved the return of the David Blaine fighter, who this time, recognizing he cannot beat Ting the old-fashioned way, goes after him with many implements including broken bottles, chairs, tables, plates, glasses, and so on. Ting mostly just lets the guy break furniture on him, which is apparently not prohibited by any of the rules of this particular fight club, and eventually their fight moves to another room, which allows Ting to send the guy flying through a flimsy wall by kicking a refrigerator which bonks into David Blaine and makes him crash through the wall. But that is not the end, because after Ting has walked away, Blaine gets up, grabs an electrified sign from the wall, breaks it, and comes after Ting with the live wire. Sparks fly everywhere, and then they are superimposed on the screen in a weird repeating pattern that looks more like snow, and eventually Ting knocks the guy out, and all these people start throwing down coins in tribute to Ting, and the superimposed sparks are replaced with superimposed U.S. quarters, and Ting quietly glories in the adulation of the crowd, and it's kind of like Ting's Nok Su Cow moment. Not surprisingly, with all this hubbub, Ting completely fails to find Don.

In the next scene, we see Don undressing some comely young lady, and tucked in her bra are little packets that we assume to be drugs. He kisses her a bunch and then, from the angle of the shot and the weird way she's acting, we can't tell if they're sexing and she's in ecstasy or if she's just high or what, and then Don says to her, "What, you prefer the way your ex-boyfriend did it?!" which tends to suggest they are sexing, but they are both still in enough clothes to make sexing difficult, and you kinda don't know if that's movie modesty or if there's something else going on, but we withdraws from her and sits across the room and appears to be getting ready to do some lines, and he asks her what the problem is, and she says she doesn't want to sell drugs for him anymore because she is trying to kick the habit, and he gets angry and comes over and kind of stuffs some powdered drug substance (cocaine? heroine? flour?) in her mouth and nose. In this was the audience can fully comprehend that Don has absolutely no redeeming value as a human being. Then there is a knock on the door, Don gets up irritatedly from his line-doing, and sees through the peephole that it is a waitress from the fight club. But when he opens the door, BAM! It's Ting and Hum Lae, and they (well, Ting, mostly) start wilding out on Don and asking about Ong-Bak. Then Hum Lae notices the drug-carrying woman, who is now foaming at the mouth, and he seems to know her, because he's calling her by name and bugging out, and with this distraction, Don runs out. Ting and Hum Lae give chase, but Hum Lae stops at the building's front desk to tell the lady there to call an ambulance because someone is dying in apartment 22 (priorities).

When Don gets out, he hops in a little three-wheeled taxi cart thing, but somehow all the drivers of the 20-off taxi cart things are in cahoots with him, so suddenly Ting and Hum Lae are wildly outnumbered, so Ting just starts running, but Hum Lae manages to steal his own taxi cart, and after Ting has jumped completely over a couple of cars that are in his way, Hum Lae swings around and they start an awesome taxi cart chase scene. It will not surprise you to learn that they find their way to a blocked off construction area of the highway, and the reason it is blocked off is because a section of the elevated highway has not been completed so there is a huge thirty-foot drop-off! And if the taxi cart goes below fifty miles an hour, it will explode! Ting and Hum Lae hit the brakes in time while many of their pursuers go flying off, and then somehow the chase turns back the other way, and some shit transpires that I can't follow exactly, but Hum Lae is safe and Ting is on the same taxi cart thing as Don and they are fighting and wrestling for control of the taxi, and then they go up a makeshift ramp and flying into the water, and they briefly wrestle under water, but then something catches Ting's eye and he lets Don swim off because THE WATER IS FULL OF STOLEN BUDDHAS AND PARTS OF BUDDHAS, JUST LIKE ONG-BAK, AND THIS IS PROBABLY SOME SYMBOLIC STATEMENT ABOUT THE DEGRADATION THAT MODERN LIVING HAS CAUSED TO TRADITIONAL THAI VALUES, but I don't really get it because I am American. End result: police (and the "Department of Antiques") discover the secret stash of stolen antiquities, which belonged to Tracheotomy Robot Gangster, so now TRG is super mad at Don and Ting, because they have cost him so much money.

Next, some guy comes and tells Ting and Hum Lae (who are chillaxing at Hum Lae's pad) that he knows how they can get Ong-Bak. The deal, offered by TRG, is that Ting has to engage in a rope fist fight (where fighters wrap their hands in twine, because that is super tough) at a fight club on the Thai-Burma border. His opponent is a bad-ass dude who has been standing near TRG through much of the movie, a dude who looks strangely like a Thai Corey Feldman, but way more ripped. Naturally, TRG and the Giggling Gangster are ringside, and TRG explains that he held the match out in the sticks so if there is a body to dispose of it will be easier (which makes me wonder what kind of gangster he is, because seriously, you have the resources to secret millions of baht worth of stolen antiquities in nets underwater, but you can't get rid of one body in fucking Bangkok?). Anyway, Giggles bets on Ting. We see both fighters get prepared for the fight which, in Ting's case just means wrapping his fists in rope and carefully selecting a rope headband, Rambo style. For Corey Feldman, though, preparation involves injecting something into his chest from a hypodermic needle - not botox, presumably. Anyway, to make a long story short, Corey Feldman wins.

In the next scene, Ting and Hum Lae are in some abandoned gas station with guns trained on them by thugs, and TRG is there, and he gives them a crate, which we thing will have Ong-Bak in it, because we learn that there was a deal: Ting throws the fight so TRG can win a bet against Giggles, and in recompense Ting gets the Buddha head and goes home. But TRG is stone cold, and they find the crate empty! TRG asks them if they really thought he would let Ting live, considering the many millions of baht Ting had cost him. (The answer is no, he was not going to let him live.) So TRG leaves with his crew and leaves a few thugs behind to kill Hum Lae and Ting.

GUESS WHAT HAPPENS: Ting kicks all of their asses. At one point, they are shooting at him and it causes some accelerant at the abandoned gas station to ignite, and then his pants are on fire, and he is just cool-as-you-please beats some dudes up with burning pants!!! Did I mention that Girl Wonder was there? I don't really remember why, but she was. Eventually, Ting vanquishes the thugs, the last of whom is Don, who tells him that TRG is "in a cave, on the other side of the mountain," and that's where Ong-Bak is. Then there is a weirdly touching moment where Ting wants to leave Hum Lae behind and go settle this ish once and for all, but he can't make some motorcycle start, and so Hum Lae gets it started and they go together to the cave place.

Now we're on familiar ground: heavily fortified mountain hideout guarded by a few dimwitted footsoldiers in the nefarious enterprise. Basically, it's Commando without the guns. Ting works his way through various levels of guards, using various cool weapons along the way. Hum Lae mostly hangs back and roots. Then they reach the inner sanctum, where a huge scaffolding has been erected so that some workmen can remove the head from a ginormous Buddha under TRG's supervision. It's still not clear why he cuts the heads of Buddhas, or if Buddha heads have value, it's not clear why he was so pissed at Don for bringing him one from Nong Pradu, but here he is, at it again. In his final and obligatory explanation of his criminality (the one which, if this were Scooby Doo, would end with, "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you pesky kids"), TRG will explain that he thinks there is no god, and that he is god (he really says this; it's rather over-the-top). But first, time for fighting with henchmen while jumping from level to level on scaffolding - reminiscent of the opening scene with the game of capture-the-flag in the tree! Then it's time for a rematch with Corey Feldman (did I mention he was there? he was), and he injects himself with five hypodermic needles at once, so his insulin levels are off the chart and he is ready to fight. This makes him into a crazy, slobbering inferno and he and Ting have a nice battle. The key moment is when he seems to have gotten the best of Ting and is throttling him, with his thumbs pressed against Ting's neck under his chin. It seems as though Corey Feldman's thumbs are going to go right through Ting's skin at any moment, and Ting's eyes are bugging out all froggy style, and then Ting catches a glimpse of the huge Buddha (its head has not been removed yet, what with the interruption of righteous fighting) and is motivated to dig deep and beat Feldman. Just then, TRG shoots Ting in the shoulder with a gun, but before he can finish him with another shot, BUDDHA'S HEAD TUMBLES OVER AND IT IS ABOUT THE SIZE OF A VOLKSWAGEN AND TRACHEOTOMY ROBOT GANGSTER IS CRUSHED, because karma is a bitch, nahmean? Of course, Hum Lae is crushed too and Girl Wonder shows up just then and they have a moment (not a romantic moment, just a "I will miss you" moment). But whatever, you knew Hum Lae wasn't going to last, just like L.L. Cool J. in that Halloween sequel.

The important thing is that Ong-Bak is returned to Nong Pradu, Ting is happy, and guess what: The drought we'd periodically been seeing scenes of during this whole adventure (I forgot to mention that: every now and then, they showed people in Nong Pradu looking destitute and bemoaning their dry well) IS TOTALLY OVER AND IT STARTS RAINING. Hooray. Thank you, Buddha. End of the movie.