I recently picked me up a copy of the next chapter in awesomeness.

Instead of rehashing his moves from the first two films he went in a new rather dark direction here. He has a fight scene on an elephant with a bird woman...

The storyline is basic. Family dies, he wants revenge. The story here is much better in every way even if it is very basic and run of the mill for Martial Arts films. Good fights and visuals keep you in the movie.

My only real gripe with the film is the vast amounts of CG blood. It gets distracting (Not as bad as Punisher cause that was just silly) but otherwise I would suggest fans of this specific genre to not wait for the North American release and buy the subtitled version.

I liked "The Protector" more than Ong Bak 1.  Where do you stand on that film?

I would agree. The first Ong Bak felt like an experiment with a very weak story and about 90% fights.

This movie surpasses both of those in story.

He uses a bunch of different fighting styles here and pulls off most of them well but I remembered after I posted my review that his "Drunking Boxing" was bad.

Compared to Jackie Chan whose style looked and flowed with the movements of the attacker whereas Tony Jaa had this angry look on his face that took me out of the style as he did it.