It is the last day of a workshop on stunts for Shankar Ramakrishnan’s directorial debut Pathinettam Padi at Chitranjali Studio. Action choreographer Kecha Khamphakdee assembles the cast in a large circle. “Action,” Kecha shouts and the cast. grouped into teams of two and three, go through their actions. At one point a punch accidentally lands on someone’s nose and it starts bleeding. While he leaves for treatment, Kecha continues with the rehearsal.
“The head should move in spring action,” Kecha instructs, as he demonstrates the movement to a young actor. For the renowned stunt coordinator and his Jaika stunt team, who have worked in blockbusters such as Troy , 300 and Baahubali 2 , this is the first taste of action in Malayalam cinema.
The veteran stuntman is gung-ho about his debut Malayalam film and has high praise for the youngsters he has been training for over six days.
Facial expression and body language, he believes, is as important as the actual moves when it comes to a good action scene. “When I train a large number of actors like I am doing here, the first thing I look for is the body language. Once we get that right, the rest will fall in place,” he says.
Kecha started as a stunt double at the age of 14 in his native Bangkok in the 90s and by the age of 20 he became a stunt master. He has worked in over 60 films and with some of the biggest action stars in the world such as Donnie Yen and Danny Trejo. Having worked in both Hollywood and India, he says the major difference between the two, apart from scale, is the planning involved in staging action. He adds, “There I need to work on an action sequence for months starting from location visit to training the actors and extras. But here I have to work on short notice and should be ready to make necessary changes if the director decides to change something during the shoot”.
Pathinettam Padi may be his first work in Malayalam, but high-flying Kecha is not entirely unfamiliar with Malayalam cinema. “I loved the action scenes in Puli Murugan . It was done well by the actor (Mohanlal) and other people involved,” he says. The mixed-martial artist has already landed his second project in Malayalam for which he is looking forward to learn Kalaripayattu and add to his resume, which already includes Muay-thai, Taekwondo, Karate and Kung fu.
