Movie poster from 'The Man with the Iron Fists' (Handout)
East meets West (at last!) in The Man With The Iron Fists, a combo of kung fu choreography and Hollywood gore carefully held together with cheese.
Grammy Award winning producer and rapper RZA (Wu Tang Clan) takes on the acting and directing duties here, and even co-wrote The Man With The Iron Fists with Eli Roth. He's a busy guy.
The story is centred in a Chinese backwater called Jungle Village in ye ancient times, where a blacksmith (RZA) who longs to stop making weapons of violence must nonetheless toil away creating killing tools for the warring clans of the territory. He is working to buy the freedom of Lady Silk (Jamie Chung), the woman he loves. She is employed at the Pink Blossom, a house of prostitution run by a charming but ruthless Madam (Lucy Liu).
A large shipment of government gold soon divides everyone up into good guys and bad guys. The ruling Lion clan, charged with guarding that gold for the emperor, is overtaken by villains (Cung Le and Byron Mann); their nemesis is the noble first son of the clan, Zen Yi (Rick Yune).
The wild card in all this is a stranger who comes to town, calling himself Jack Knife (Russell Crowe). He's a gent and a lady's man, but when required, he can slice a man open from stem to stern without a qualm. Crowe's performance will remind you of a glorious Christmas ham, but there's no doubt he brings a lot of life to the proceedings.
Throw in a few more bad guys like the 'Brass Body' killer (Dave Bautista) and Poison Dagger (Daniel Wu) and you have the makings of an excellent David and Goliath story. Our heroic Zen Yi and the humble blacksmith must fight off an army of baddies, but at least they get help from unexpected corners. (Hint: not the script.)
The Man With The Iron Fists is corny and kind of exuberantly bad. The fight scenes are pretty to look at but incomprehensible, and the chop-chop editing makes it impossible to see what the heck is going on. Not that it matters. This is an unwieldy adventure aimed at fans of martial arts, but there's a jokey element (not necessarily intentional) to the film that may make it a cult favourite
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