Muay Thai master Tony Jaa is back in action in “Striking Rescue,” a clumsily titled, ineptly subtitled and generically plotted Chinese thriller where the fights are to die for, the characters and plot not so much.

Twenty-plus years since his break-out in “Ong Bak” and Jaa still brings the muscle to brawling martial arts revenge thrillers like this one. Thicker and more solidly built, when he throws a punch drops a kick these days, we believe the damage it’s going to cause. And how.

Jaa plays Ann Bai, whom we meet as Kun Tai, as the Chinese media and authorities have named him, a wanted man in connection with events that killed his wife and child.

But he wasn’t the killer. And naming him Kun Tai, from Tai Chi, is a blunder. An Bai, from the punching martial art Baji Quan, is closer to who this real “wanted man” must be.

A street level mobster may have some answers about who killed his wife and child. That’s where Ann Bai’s hunt begins. He stalks the sunglasses-and-cigarettes villain through the market, only to have the guy’s whole gang descend on him with machetes and fists.

“Don’t grill the fish,” Boss yells at his lunch hour mob in Chinese (with subtitles, and a smattering of English). “Grill the guy coming up behind me!”

That’s kind of how the movie goes. A bigger boss, Yinghua (Philip Keung) is ID’d and pursed and targeted, with mobs of henchmen to overcome. Then a bigger boss (Michael Mao). And a cackling martial arts minx (Wang Chenxim) sizzles her way towards a showdown.

Yinghua has a rebellious teen daughter (Chen Duo-yi) whom Ann Bai locates, then tracks to get to her dad. But before he can set off his planned roadside bomb and tear through Yinghua’s gang to get to him, others ambush the mobster and Ann Bai finds himself rescuing the punk daughter, who has a grudge against Daddy.

“We can work together,” Te Hing teases. “Don’t you want revenge?”

Junjia Hong plays the dashing, two-fisted bodyguard who lets the teen Te Hing slips out of his protection. Bo Peng plays the boss’s trusted number two, who might be his older daughter. A lot of stuff like that is as muddy as the translation.

“Follow me or die here,” Ann Bai snaps at the girl when he just wants her to jump in his pickup. “I told you to fight back and NOT cause trouble,” dad Yinghua contradictorally snaps at Te Hing when he sees she’s been brawling at school again.

“Now you are getting more NONSENSICAL” he barks when she talks back.

Wang Chenxin is the standout of the supporting cast, a stylish dragon lady with rose colored glasses and a taste for blood, a harpy handy with ice climbing axes in a fight.

I pretty much checked out of the story, which presents Ann Bai a master of martial arts master, a master of surveillance, unraveling criminal conspiracies and whiz with electronics, the moment he beats “Tell me the LICENSE plate number” of a car out of a thug who has mentioned Te Hing has a regular ride home.

Who remembers their own plate number, much less another?

But the fights, choreographed by Guo Yu Long, are brilliantly staged, shot and cut-together. We see blows delivered from a fist-eye-view, from shoulder shots and everywhere else, all of it cut into a visually coherent blur of blows. Brilliant.

Lashing a camera to a motorbike’s front fork is a great way to amp up a chase scene, and director Chen Si Yu — the martial arts fantasy “Fists of Fure: Soul” was his — takes care to at least showcase the action if not the logic and suspense in the “nonsensical” story.

Somebody killed his wife and kid. Tony Jaa is on their trail and out for revenge. A little back story and a parade of bigger and bigger villains to fight through is all that’s necessary beyond that.

Rating: unrated, bloody violence, drugs

Cast: Tony Jaa, Chen Duo-Yi, Philip Keung, Michael Mao, Bo Peng and Wang Chenxin.

Credits: Directed by Chen Si Yu, scripted by A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:48