Amid all the atrociously edited, laughably dubbed and poorly plotted action that makes up this Thai import is a bravura sequence that single-handedly saves the movie. Tony Jaa plays a Thai elephant herder who travels to Australia to rescue a pair of pachyderms that have been kidnapped by gangsters – see what I mean? – and at one point he infiltrates a secret brothel that has a winding central staircase. As Jaa methodically makes his way through nearly a hundred henchman, the camera follows him up, up and around in one long, uninterrupted take that is a masterstroke of choreography. Momentarily, The Protector looks like Brian De Palma’s lost martial-arts film.
