The Man with the Iron Fists - Movie Review

Movie Review

The Man with the Iron Fists is RZA’s homage to Saturday afternoon bad kung fu movies. It’s hyper-violent, full of overly explicit gore that really didn’t add anything to the film. There are pieces of several interesting movies here, but they don’t really fit together into a cohesive whole.

The main character is the blacksmith (RZA), who exists at the center of a conflict (read: gang war) in Jungle village (located in China). There is a promising voiceover to start: “When you forge a weapon, you need three things. The right metal. Temperatures over fourteen hundred degrees. And someone who wants to use it to kill.” Unfortunately, like David Lynch’s Dune, it fails to live up to the strong beginning.

Prominent in the conflict are the members of the Lion clan: their leader Gold Lion, his second-in-command Silver Lion (Byron Mann), and Gold Lion’s son Zen-Yi (Rick Yune). They are in conflict with both the Wolf clan and the Hyena clan, and all of the clans are subordinate to both the governor and the emperor. There is also the Dragon Inn, where everyone eats or stays at one time or another, and the Pink Blossom brothel run by enigmatic Madame Blossom (Lucy Liu).

All of the clans are looking for custom weapons, built by the blacksmith of course. They each have a strong identity with a lot of effort going into the “look” for each group: costumes and hair style, as well as weapons.

The plot has numerous holes, and it’s uneven. From fights and vengeance it jumps to unnecessary backstory. Motivations are left muddy, so it’s hard to tell what side some characters are on. There are some fantastic elements to the characters that are never explained–apparently there is magic or mysticism in this universe that everyone accepts without question.

Other parts of the movie are just plain confusing. Some short sections of the movie are in Chinese, with English subtitles. I couldn’t tell what the criteria was to decide where the Chinese should be. It’s also odd that an R-rated movie with so many scenes in a brothel has no nudity.

The fights are somewhat choppy, which is terribly disappointing, because the martial arts look great, the wire work is outstanding, and I’d love to see more of both.

RZA plays the blacksmith as too laid back to carry the plot as the main character–it would have been better if the story centered on Zen-Yi or Jack Knife (Russell Crowe), who gave much more complex performances. It would have upped the intensity considerably.

Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu are absolutely wonderful, dominating every scene they’re in. One of the best scenes in the movie, obviously, is when their two characters meet. I did like the way that the movie built up to three separate one-on-one fights that were nicely interwoven–but where did that Hall of Mirrors come from?

This one looked like fun, but was a little hard to follow, and just not that interesting. If you like martial arts movies, you probably want to see this one, but wait until it hits cable.

Review by Elektra Hammond