Chris Reviews The Man With the Iron Fists

This was definitely one of the more interesting looking films of the year. Whether it was good or bad you had to give RZA, Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino props for making something so unique. That being said this was going to be a cult favorite movie at best and probably would not gain a large audience. So did it appeal to a guy that generally falls for exploitation/terrible old school action movies? As usual read below to find out......

The Good-

As I said the concept on paper sounds pretty cool and it was definitely a very unique film. I loved the concept of mixing martial arts and hip hop as I think it is something that actually goes pretty well together (like Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai mixed Samurai films with hip hop). There were some really interesting visual ideas that were presented in here as well. The best aspect of the film though had to be the acting performances that were so terrible they were funny. Russell Crowe stood out as he really phoned this one in but he just looked so terribly out of shape and essentially spent the entire film killing people and having fun with prostitutes that it was laughable.

The Bad-

Oh my gosh there is so many things wrong with this film! As I said the acting is TERRIBLE! Im sorry to say that RZA was not very exciting as the lead and he was hardly even in the film until the third act. His narration was almost incomprehensible which really made it hard to ever know what was going on. I think that is the biggest weakness of this film, you really have no clue what the hell is going on! I got the basic premise of there being some gold and that a bunch of dudes wanted to steal it but after that, the story fell apart and lost me as a viewer. Even the action sequences which were supposed to be the strength of the film, were sporadically cool but for the most part poorly edited.

Summary-

I really wanted to like this film and for the first 30 minutes it was fun. The problem is that when you have a story that makes no sense after those first 30 minutes the viewer gets lost and thus the film has no impact. It ended up becoming a collection of scenes of the most American sounding Asian actors fighting each other and Russell Crowe killing people and having fun with prostitutes. If you are a fan of bad movies and also like the martial arts/exploitation genre its watchable but for everyone else stay away!

MY RATING-

2.5 out of 5

Chris "Da Franchize" Hart