THIS GIRL IS BAD-ASS!! (2011)

THIS GIRL IS BAD-ASS!! (2011)

Tagline: She's the best in the business.

(Action, Comedy, Martial Arts Gone Mad) [R]

Note: This movie also goes by the title JUKKALAN which is the name of the protagonist.

Make your mind a cucumber.

In this one, we get the story of Jukkalan who is magically just super skilled at everything and will kick your teeth in with her feet, a bike, knives, hoses, trash bags, whatever is just laying around. Because she is working for competing mob bosses against her uncle Sawang’s advice it doesn’t take long before things get out of hand. She is given 7 days to return one of the packages she’s delivered already or she will be assassinated. Meanwhile, Jukkalan’s uncle is privately helping a single woman who owes money to bad people. This exposes him to trouble of his own as he is being hunted by a killer that sings his own theme music.  

One thing that sort of plagues this flick is that several of the characters have bizarre obsessions with feet. I wouldn’t be shocked if Quentin Tarantino owns this thing. I don’t really get that, but that is what is going on in the first half of this flick whenever Jukkalan isn’t kicking everyone’s teeth in. I have seen some reviews ripping on the fight scenes as being boring, but I didn’t think that at all and I watch a lot of flicks with martial arts in them. I thought all of the bike fighting was awesome and the fact that Jukkalan isn’t afraid to just use whatever she can find to fight someone was quite inventive.  

There is an entire conversion in this movie about bootlegging and the Ministry of Commerce concerning pirated CDs or anything pirated. Offenders get fined up to 10 million baht (the currency in Thailand) and five years in prison. It’s kind of an anti-theft diatribe that is fine, but really has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. For the record as of 2023, 10 million baht would be about $287,500.00 U.S. dollars. That is a pretty high price for piracy even for those of us that think it destroys the entertainment industry. 

When it comes to the story I found it pretty heartwarming when it comes to Jukkalan and her relationship with her Uncle, in which he has taken on a fatherhood role. There are some decent characters in this and some characters I really wish weren’t in it. I get that they wanted to add some humor because this is a comedy, but most of the humor is actually in the dialog itself and isn’t really dependent on outlandish characters. There is also a scene where one of the gangster’s assassins gets attacked by another mob boss in a standoff. Several of the female assassins gather around one of the bosses looking scared. It really doesn’t make any sense. They are literally assassins. I am pretty sure in that line of work; you aren’t fearful of other assassins. I get that this is a comedy, but at least be consistent with your own storyline. 

Acting wise JeeJa Yanin who plays Jukkalan did an amazing job. She hasn’t been in anything in 4 years but has some movies in her resume that are fairly well respected. In real life, JeeJa holds 3 black belts and has been training in martial arts since she was 11. It’s too bad they didn’t bother just saying something like that in the actual movie. Phetthai Vongkumlao is also solid in this as Sawang but didn’t display any fighting skills. Vongkumlao is actually a big action star with multiple action flicks under his belt including 3 well-known action series, ONG-BAK, THE BODYGUARD, and THE PROTECTOR. 

Not all of the humor works, but I love quirky stuff so I actually laughed out loud at some of these lines and scenes. If you don’t like subtitles this is not for you, but I enjoyed it for the most part. I could have done without the first half hour aside from the bike fight scene which was pretty epic. 

This one gets a 4 out of 7 from me. It lived up to its title and I thought it was pretty fun. 

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