I think XKCD was asking somebody to make a movie like this...

So I just got done watching a movie called Chocolate. It was from the makers of Ong Bak and The Protector, and I must say this has been one of the best kung fu movies I've ever seen.

The movie centers on a young autistic girl named Zen who grows up across the street from a martial arts school. She spends many of her days staring vacantly out the window, mentally recording everything she sees. Later in life, her childhood friend and unofficial handler, Moon (pronounced Moe-On) use her instinctive reflexes to perform small-time shows in public, encouraging the crowd to donate money to help her pay for her medical treatments.

While the movie's second act is largely a series of dazzling martial arts set pieces, the moviemakers take the portrayal of an autistic child from a poor family very seriously, and make a genuine attempt to communicate how dramatically Zen's condition impacts her life. She is capable of reasoning and has a basic understanding of spoken language, but things that should come naturally to a normal human being are completely beyond her. While she's an extremely comptent martial artist, there's a certain vacant look in her eyes that betrays the fact that while she can perfectly mimic things she's seen before, she doesn't fully comprehend what's going on.

JeeJa Yanin, the actress, displays a talent that's rare in action stars. Her character isn't actually capable of coherent conversation, and in fact never says a complete sentence at any point during the movie, which meant that the role required a lot of facial expression and emotive yelling. Despite this, JeeJa manages to communicate emotion surprisngly well. My opinion is colored by the fact that this was an action movie first and a drama second, but I think her performance would have been at least acceptable if it was the other way around.

As for the action, everything is shot at normal speed, with nothing fast forwarded in post. As the video rolled during the credits will show you, this is a significantly less safe way to make a movie, but I think it pays off in the form of very realistic fight scenes. JeeJa emotes pretty well, but how she moves is something else altogether. It's very hard to believe that this is her first movie.

Anyway, it's on netflix and can be streamed, so if you like kung fu movies, think a mentally handicapped martial artist is an interesting premise, or just felt like the barfight from Serenity deserved to be a whole movie instead of just one scene, it's definitely worth the 90 minutes it takes to watch.