Chocolate

Jeeja Yanin is a lot more dangerous than she looks. Aged 24 but barely passing for half that, she’s the most diminutive lethal organism to come out of Thailand since bird flu.

So if the world wasn’t ready for action guru Prachya Pinkaew’s last Muay Thai discovery – the incredible Tony Jaa - it’s about to have its gob smacked even harder by Jeeja.

She plays Zen, a unique young lady whose mum Zin split from her father after the pair left the employ of a local mobster.

Raised by her mum, Zen grows up to hate flies but loves Smarties and Bruce Lee. And not that her chubby friend Moom (Taphon Phopwandee) would ever take advantage, but her ability to catch anything thrown in her direction is certainly worth a few baht down the market square.

With Zin desperately needing chemotherapy, they need all the money they can get. But Zen’s skills only really come into their own when Moom discovers a ledger detailing all the people who owe her mum money – a who’s who of dodgy businessmen.

Unsurprisingly, the only thing the crooks are willing to hand freely to a couple of weird kids is a good hiding. Their underestimation costs them dear.

In a series of superbly choreographed fight sequences, Zen proceeds to lay waste to the entire workforce of Scumbags Inc.

An homage to Bruce Lee’s ice-factory brawl in The Big Boss leads to fisticuffs among the flat-packs of an office supply warehouse before the cleaver-wielding goons at a flyblown meat-packing plant get to taste some of Zen's own special chops.

Then, since he refuses to let bygones be bygones, the autistic dervish turns her attention to Zin’s old gang boss in a showdown that starts like the infamous ‘Crazy 88’ massacre in Tarantino’s Kill Bill and ends with a precarious tussle above a neon-lit street. Talk about nosebleed territory.

And did we mention the jaw-dropping scrap between Zen and her male equivalent - a drooling teenager with St Vitus Dance?

Don’t bother looking for wires and safety nets because there aren’t any. As the end credits show in wince-making detail, all the performers genuinely suffer for their art.

But since this is a director who once put an elephant through a plate-glass window, you'd have to be a bit of a girl to moan about the odd black eye and a fat lip.

Tellingly, Jeeja doesn't do “oo-yah”.

Elliott Noble