The Man with the Iron Fists Swings, Misses
Going into ‘The Man with the Iron Fists’, I was reminded of walking into my local Blockbuster (for those of you old enough to remember that those used to exist) as a young boy and picking up a VHS version of ‘Kung Pow! Enter the Fist’ — both films are parodies of old school Hong Kong action films, and they are both ridiculously…well, ridiculous. Just when you thought Hollywood couldn’t bring anymore cheese, it took out a federally backed loan for more and produced ‘The Man with the Iron Fists’. But then, when you combine RZA, Russell Crowe, Lucy Liu, and David Bautista, what more could you really expect?
The basics? The plot is messy, the characters are bland and static, and the script is about as silly as any other kung fu film. Russell Crowe plays a European soldier, RZA — who wrote, directed, starred in, and did the music for the film — plays a quiet blacksmith set on vengeance, and David Bautista (of WWE fame) plays a bronzed up powerhouse. When I say “bronzed up”, I don’t mean tan — though he certainly is that — I mean his body is literally cast from the metal bronze in the movie, and that makes for more than one troublesome fight scenes.
And oh, the fight scenes.
From a Hong Kong style fighting flick, I’d expect no fewer than a handful of scenes that require invisible wires to make it seem as though actors are flying through the air while seamlessly decapitating their opponents. ‘The Man with the Iron Fists’ however, makes use of such strings in at least every other scene, because someone dies in literally every other scene.
The deaths of the actors are not simple, either. Too frequently are throats ripped from necks, abdomens cut open to spill internal organs to the floor, and limbs removed one by one to reveal mangled flesh and bone. The film is, at the very least, a true testament to the infatuation with gore that Eli Roth seemingly has. Mind you, Roth has also put forth films like ‘Hostel’ and ‘Cabin Fever’, both of which were pantheons of splattered blood and violent deaths — so really, all the gore in ‘The Man with the Iron Fists’ comes as no surprise…I simply wouldn’t advise eating anything before or during the film.
Overall, it isn’t a bad movie. Certainly not the best option this weekend (I’d opt to see ‘Flight’ or even ‘Wreck-It Ralph’), but if you have the money to blow and are in the mood for a good (a term I use loosely) action flick, by all means treat yourself to what is in many ways a bloodier knock-off of older kung fu films.
