If there were a chart to gauge the seriousness with which movie stories were meant to be taken, The Protector would be at one end, while at the other there would be something like The Passion of the Christ. For a film revolving around the retrieval of stolen elephants and the hero pounding the stuffing out of anyone who gets in his way, The Protector doesn't require much brain power or analytical thought.

In the follow-up to his cult action hit Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior, rising genre star Tony Jaa plays Cam, the latest in a long line of people who have dedicated their lives to ensuring the safety of those elephants viewed as majestic creatures in the eyes of royalty. But Cam's life takes a turn for the worse when a noble elephant and a plucky young pachyderm are seized by a group of baddies working for a slinky gangsteress (Xing Jing) who desires the power the animals seemingly possess (don't ask why, just take it with a  grain of salt).

Thus, driven by a code of honor and armed with brutally effective Muay-Thai martial arts skills, Cam heads off to Sydney, Australia, home base for the thugs who kidnapped his beloved elephants, and proceeds to go on a virtually non-stop rampage, kicking various antagonists with athletic flair along the way, in a quest to save the sacred animals from certain doom.

The Protector is made in the same vein of such films as Ong-Bak and District B13, incorporating a style of screen fighting that has the performers hurling themselves through the air as if the whole world were a giant trampoline. Unfortunately, in displaying this type of rock 'em-sock 'em action, The Protector comes up with choppy results. Right off the bat, the film seems edited with a machete: large chunks appear ripped out of a longer movie that, in its present form, really looks messy. Chase scenes pop up out of nowhere, subplots are introduced before being instantly forgotten, and characters seem to drift purposelessly in and out of the film like cinematic specters.

Considering the smashing successes of Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it's obvious that moviegoers are ready for a little brain with their brawn; but in its chopped-down, poorly-dubbed, and erratically-edited American condition, The Protector comes across as a goofy movie about this dude beating up anyone who won't give back his elephant.

Still, all is not lost here. Some of the fight scenes are true sights to behold, including a single-take, four-minute brawl with Tony Jaa clobbering foes left and right in a restaurant, as well as a bit near the end where Jaa breaks the bones of about thirty henchmen in a row (I can only imagine how many crushed plastic cups the sound effects man went through in recording this scene).

In the end, The Protector emerges as an action flick that does a good enough job killing time with some  brainless action. However, seeing The Protector instead of something like the much-superior Ong-Bak is a lot like ordering a burger from McDonald's when you realize you could've had a good-sized steak instead.

MY RATING: ** 1/2 (out of ****)

(Released by The Weinstein Company and rated “R” for pervasive strong violence and some sexual content.)