When it comes to pure, unmitigated, no-strings-attached martial arts action this delivers the goods. Made in Thailand on what looks like a modest production budget Ong-Bak is a martial arts actioner with a distinctly old-fashioned flavour - the stunts are real rather than computer-generated, the story is cartoonish, and it loves those slomo action replays.

Tony Jaa is Ting a rural monk from a small village, who on a quest to the big city must overcome a series of challenges in order to retrieve a stolen deity. There's not much more to add than that since plot, character development, and acting are left at the roadside as our earnest hero is given free reign to show off his martial prowess.

More "realistic" than the high-wire action typified by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, this still has a make-believe aura about it, a reflection of the heavily choreographed fight scenes. It is violent, but not in the Tarantino way with dismembered limbs flying around and a wall to wall bloodbath. Fighters are walloped over the head with large objects and thrown across the room, but are more likely to be knocked out cold rather than expire gruesomely.

The film moves so fast that you barely have time to worry about the deficiencies in the story. The stunts themselves are impressively dangerous. The opening flag game sequence, for instance, in which Ting dispatches other fighters from the branches of a huge tree while trying to retrieve a red flag from its top, elicited sympathetic groans from the audience as bodies tumbled and bounced off the branches to the hard ground below.

The action just doesn't ever let up. In another scene, Ting takes on a succession of fighters in an illegal boxing house, each more dangerous than the previous. The opponents just keep on coming and coming until the house is literally falling apart around the final two combattants.

Jaa, who practices Muay Thai boxing, has the speed and inventiveness of other martial arts greats. He is particularly fond of a move which involves jumping up high and landing his two elbows straight down on his opponent's head to devastating effect. He can fell a man with one powerful thigh kick, but he also creates moves that are cheaky and brazen, like bouncing off peoples' shoulders when cornered or finding 101 ways to beat up your opponent while riding a three-wheeler taxi.

Jaa's character is less exciting than other martial arts heros. Where Bruce Lee was lean, mean and taciturn or Jackie Chan plays as much a clown as a fighter, Jaa is set up here as more of a two-sided hero. On the one side is a gentle and naive youth, who only reluctantly shows his other side, the prize fighter, when fighting the righteous fight. Fortunately, for viewers there's more of the latter than the former here.