Fireball

Fireball - the game - is no-holds-barred extreme basketball where sadism more than skill takes center court. “For love of the game” takes new meaning in this fast-moving match between five-men teams who literally beat, maim and sometimes kill each other to score points. But points, like control of the ball, mean little in this blood sport where winning is determined by survival in the arena.

When Tan (Preeti “Bank” Barameeanant, leader of famous Thai rock band Clash) is burned and beaten into a coma by Tun in a fireball match, his twin brother Tai, newly released from prison, takes his place in Den’s upcoming team (members of which include real life ex-professional athletes). In a series of violent fireball matches that take place in caged courts for audiences placing bets in a lucrative business, Tai proves himself as good as his brother, invokes the abuse of Tun, and sees a couple of his teammates killed by rivals and by a disgruntled mob of punters.

Off-court, Tai finds himself attracted to Tan’s lover, the attractive Pang but they both step back from the brink of sex out of loyalty to the comatose Tan. Disgusted by the violence of fireball and the match fixing that goes on between the gangster owners of the teams, Tai decides to quit but learns that Pang is prostituting herself and has borrowed money for surgery for Tan’s recovery. Learning also that Tan’s fireball money has helped secure his release from prison, Tai continues to play, leading to a climactic match where he settles scores with Tun. But it is a game that will leave only one man alive…

In the convention of gladiatorial blood sports movies, Fireball concentrates more on action than plot. Its hyperkinetic camera work suggests MTV on steroids, replacing the Bazinian reality of the play with the Eisensteinian subjectivity of the players as they jump, punch and crunch their way across the court in one big muay thai boxing fight to the death.

Beyond the action, the images are compelling and provocative. In 2008 when this film was made, Thailand was subjected to political chaos with conservative-backed mobs trying to bring down [exiled ex-Prime Minister] Thaksin-related administrations. As an echo of this contemporary reality, Fireball is loaded with images of the braying fireball mob celebrating chaos, violence and bloodletting for their own selfish ends. The film also implies that self-interest and gangster rule can shove aside the belief in nationhood (an enduring thematic of Thai movies) and lead to a corruption of Thai democracy (established 35 years ago, just like the fictitious fireball game) that is manipulated by elites to keep the masses distracted and suppressed. Interpreted this way, the very last image is a very potent call to arms.

Finally, the double image of the static comatose Tan and the hyperactive Tai suggests the phantasm of the Other, where each twin is dreaming the other, in a simulacrum of political consciousness. Tai means “freedom” while Tan can mean “representative” - signifying the twins’ dialectical role in the narrative of sacrifice and democracy.