“Hi Spielberg, let’s do it together,” reads a graffitied message on a wall in one scene from Tony Jaa’s Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior. It’s a invitation for Spielberg to cast him in a film.

That’s one offer Spielberg should be glad to accept. Jaa, a martial arts star of almost superhuman abilities, knows how to an execute a thrilling action sequence. And he and the directors appear share the same fundamental belief about action/adventure films, namely, that it’s fine to suspend logic and plausibility as long as you make things look really, really cool.

Spielberg’s influence is apparent throughout Ong-Bak. The film borrows much of its slender plot from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: Bad guys steal a sacred relic from an impoverished village, causing drought and misfortune. To win it back, the hero must face a series of calamities, fighting off squadrons of goons before defeating the kingpin bad guy in a final climactic sequence.

But there’s a key difference. Temple of Doom harbored disturbing colonialist overtones: It featured a tribe of helpless Indian villagers menaced by a barbaric pagan cult (characterized by human sacrifice and the eating of monkey brains), who were saved by the intervention of two white people and one Chinese stereotype.

Ong-Bak, however, reclaims Temple of Doom for Asia. Its hero, Ting, is a native-born villager and a devout Buddhist. The bad guys, in this film, are the ones with no respect for religion, whereas Ting would risk his life to restore the head of Ong-Bak, a sacred statue of Buddha, to his hometown. He is seen praying and at a critical juncture in the film he draws strength from gazing upon another Buddhist statue.

Ting’s sidekicks, a con artist named Humlae and his partner, a tomboy called Muay, also owe something to the Indiana Jones trilogy; they’re reminiscent of Sallah and Short Round, respectively. Like the Indy characters, they follow the hero around, getting into trouble and having to be rescued and taking part, to comic effect, in his battles.

Ong-Bak also features one incredible fight scene almost certainly inspired by Indy’s escape from Nazi agents in the Cairo bazaar in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Like the Cairo scene, the Ong-Bak set piece takes place in a series of alleyways lined with vendors’ stalls. But here the alleys will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s spent time in an Asian city: the vendors are cooking dumplings and kabobs and selling knives, clothes, cheap sunglasses, and all manner of motley items. It’s a little love note to Asian urban life, combined with one killer, over-the-top action sequence. Jaa fights off his enemy’s goons with Muay Thai boxing moves while hurtling around and over cooking stalls, cars, kids blowing bubbles, a knife seller’s cart, and sundry other obstacles. At one point, in an absurdist touch worthy of the Simpsons, he squeezes between two panes of glass being carried by workmen. Goofy? Sure. But also breathtaking. Time and again and I found myself gasping and marveling, “How on earth does he do that?”

What’s even more remarkable is that Jaa does all his stunts without the aid of wires or CGI trickery. This gives the film a visceral feeling welcome in an age of overly slick, artificial-looking imagery. Spielberg—he of the corny monkeys-on-vines scene in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull—ought to be taking notes.