On the surface, BTF appears to follow a very simple plot, but it gets so complicated that I still have no idea what was going on. There's some stuff about a lawyer and a notebook, and then some guys in matching jackets beat someone up. (It takes so long to get to the title sequence that a buddy I was watching it with thought it was over and said, "Is that it?")

We meet the main character, P'Tong, practicing martial arts with his son and daughter. The Matching Jackets Gang shows up to fight him and he beats them all. I have no idea what the point of that was, because then some guy P'Tong knows (his former boss, I guess) gets out of his car and tells P'Tong he needs to go to the city to find someone.

P'Tong makes it to the city, but everywhere he goes, some new gang tries to beat him up. He meets up with the inescapable comic relief; they find Uncle Jam and then fight some more. Guys in black coveralls and ski masks jump around in the dark and get P'Tong blamed for something or other. There's some nonsense about mistaken identity, but I was never clear on who the bad guys were or why they needed to kidnap Samsung or Sampan or whatever that guy's name was that P'Tong was looking for. At the end, suddenly the ski-mask ninjas show up again. Finally we get a fight scene worth waiting for (and a bunch of painful-looking stunts that Rittikrai recycled for Tony Jaa). But no terrorists.

The comic relief was mostly irritating, but there were a couple of genuinely funny moments. The girl was cute, but absolutely worthless. The one time when I thought she was actually going to fight, she stood up, clenched her fist...and then stepped back and started cheerleading for P'Tong. She deserved the beatdown she got a few minutes later.

I applaud the effort, but for the most part, the experience is like watching any no-budget early-80s cookie-cutter Chinese kung fu movie. In some regards, it's downright primitive: the acting is terrible; people and vehicles obviously start from dead stops at the beginning of takes; and the vehicle chases take place at about five miles per hour. But hey--this movie led to another, and another, and the rest is history.

Overall, "Born to Fight '84" may be worth a look if you really like old school martial arts movies, but for technical proficiency and sheer jaw-dropping stunt work, see the remake.

The film itself has many flaws. The direction and acting are probably mediocre at best. The storyline is relatively standard, and possibly relies too heavily on two characters looking similar.

All that aside, there are several great action sequences in this film. You can see the wheels beginning to spin for films like "Ong-Bak", "Born to Fight", and "Tom Yum Goong". The motorcycle chase scene is particularly good, but every fight is full of awesome stuntwork and good concepts. This film also features a little more kung fu style fighting than most of Panna Rittikrai's other films.

This film has some really excellent fighting and stuntwork that needs to be seen, but it’s extremely low budget and looks like an old Lo Wei or Huang Feng film. If it had the production quality of "Ong-Bak", everyone would need to own this movie.