Thai Boxing: A Fighting Chance - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Thai Boxing: A Fighting Chance is a 2002 documentary

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

by independent producer Susanne Cornwall Carvin. The hour-long film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, narrated by British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

Jason Statham

Jason Statham born 12 September1967) is an English actor and former diver, known for his roles in the Guy Ritchie crime films Revolver, Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels...

, follows the lives of three boxer

Boxing

Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...

s as they prepare to compete in muay thai

Muay Thai

Muay Thai is a combat sport from Thailand that uses stand-up striking along with various clinching techniques. It is similar to other Indochinese kickboxing systems, namely pradal serey from Cambodia, tomoi from Malaysia, lethwei from Myanmar and muay Lao from Laos...

, also known as Thai boxing. One character, Sam Sheridan, is a 27-year old Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

graduate who has traveled to Thailand

Thailand

Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

to learn the art of muay thai from Apidej Sit-Harun, a retired boxing champion. The second primary character, Gong-Prai Sorjintana, is a 13-year-old boy from the town of Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya (city)

Ayutthaya city is the capital of Ayutthaya province in Thailand. Located in the valley of the Chao Phraya River. The city was founded in 1350 by King U Thong, who went there to escape a smallpox outbreak in Lop Buri and proclaimed it the capital of his kingdom, often referred to as the Ayutthaya...

; his mother runs a boxing camp for troubled teenagers and he's fighting to raise money for university. The third character, Boon-Term Kitmuti, is a 29-year-old mother of two children who wanted to box when she was younger, before muay thai was legal for women. Now that there is an active muay thai league for women, she has decided to travel to Bangkok and learn the sport, despite the disapproval of her husband. Her husband left because he didn't like women anymore.

The documentary follows each character as they prepare for their next fight, while weaving in the history and culture of the sport. At the climax of the film, the three characters fight difficult opponents, experiencing mixed results.

Thai Boxing: A Fighting Chance was a personal endeavor of Susanne Cornwall Carvin and her future husband, Andy Carvin. She invested her life savings in the production before knowing whether it would be purchased for distribution. In 2003, it was aired on the National Geographic Channel

National Geographic Channel

National Geographic Channel, also commercially abbreviated and trademarked as Nat Geo, is a subscription television channel that airs non-fiction television programs produced by the National Geographic Society. Like History and the Discovery Channel, the channel features documentaries with factual...

in more than 140 countries. The film went on to be featured in numerous film festivals, including the Ft. Lauderdale Film Festival, the Hawaii International Film Festival and the Banff Film Festival.

See also