Dear "The Protector" (2005),
So I watched your movie late last night and until the 1:23:00 mark, you are pretty much exactly what I was expecting; a mix of badly written lines, decent stunts and great martial arts. Then 1:23:00 happens and you turn into the BEST MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN. And how could you not be? At that very moment, your protagonist walks into a press conference with a baby elephant screaming "Where the hell is my elephant?!" Everyone kinda looks at him dumbfounded until he elbows someone right in the face, starting a panic. Like a crazy person, he delivers a few hard hits to the screaming innocent, then he's off as quickly as he came in, following his little elephant (named 'Korn') through the building.
Korn leads him into an ambush and to the remains of his other fully grown elephant. Your protagonist decides this is the best time to mourn, which equates to three or four different takes of him hugging an elephant, even though it's at the worst possible time: when 30 or so dudes are kicking him in his sob-ridden face...repeatedly.
Then you have him get stabbed dead center of his liver (I'm no doctor, but that was definitely his liver and that was definitely the center). I know why you did this, you needed him to snap back from his fetish-like fantasy of being half-naked in a jungle hugging elephants, but...Ouch. Kinda brutal, no? I mean the guys knife went in like 6 inches. But for some reason, instead of our hero being like "Oww...blood?...WTF?...where's my ele...phant?" and passing out, you have him proceed to literally break more than a hundred bones in a row (I counted) in the most creative ways I've ever seen. This scene is so great, the sound effects alone are cringe-worthy. My favorite part is when he Million Dollar Baby's a dude with his knees.
Then to take your movie to new heights (read: lows), he uses the bones of his dead elephant to beat the living **** out of the villains' top body guards. Wasn't he just mourning? Didn't he love his elephant? Where's the respect to the dead? He used his elephant's femur to give a guy brain-damage!
Best part though is when Korn busts through the door looking for some action or to help or something (I don't know he's an elephant -- his intentions are hard to read). After the "oh look an elephant" moment wears off, he is immediately picked by his trunk and swung around into a wall. This scene is so unnecessary but is probably the greatest thing I've ever seen. Thank you for not leaving this on the cutting floor.
You definitely saved the best for last though when your hero chases down the villains for a final confrontation. He finds them attempting to escape from the roof by helicopter. One of them decided to leave earlier than the other, but lowers a rope so they can hang on as they make their get-away. Our protagonist doesn't like this and proceeds to SUPER JUMP KICK the pilot in the jaw, knocking him out of the helicopter and back onto the roof, probably killing him. The other villain, just having watched her partner probably die, still thinks it's a good idea to hang on to the rope as the helicopter careens off the building's roof without a pilot. Our hero doesn't like the odds of the villain's survival (which is literally like .0005%) so he decides to take matters into his own hands and do the most epic thing he can't think of: SUPER JUMP off the building and KNEE her in the face. They then both fall to their presumptive deaths; which is the best ending to a movie, period.
I know he loved his elephants, but good God. This dude reallllllllllyyyy loved his elephants.
Anyway, I know I didn't need to recap it, since you are the movie, but do the world a favor and release the 'STOGI Cut' of just those 15-20 minutes. I promise you the world will love it as much as I did.
Watching you again I'm sure,
Stogi