{"id":2110,"date":"2012-11-06T12:00:43","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T19:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/?p=2110"},"modified":"2018-02-12T16:04:50","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T23:04:50","slug":"the-man-with-the-iron-fists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/2012\/11\/06\/the-man-with-the-iron-fists\/","title":{"rendered":"The Man with the Iron Fists"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Directed by: RZA
\nStarring: RZA, Russell Crowe, Lucy Liu, Rick Yune, Dave Bautista, Jamie Chung, Cung Le, Byron Mann, Daniel Wu
\nRated: R for bloody violence, strong sexuality, language and brief drug use<\/p>\n

The moment the opening credits for \u201cThe Man with the Iron Fists\u201d start to roll, you can tell exactly what kind of movie it is. There\u2019s an explanatory voiceover and a massive fight, paused periodically for over-saturated, old-school-style still frames for each credit — and the credits are all in both English and Chinese. By the time it got to \u201cQuentin Tarantino Present\u201d (sic), I was sold. This is an homage to Hong Kong action flicks and exploitation films, a blenderized rendition of every trope and camera shot we\u2019ve seen and loved a hundred times.<\/p>\n

The story, which involves a shipment of government gold through a small village populated almost entirely by various gangs, is convoluted and exists mostly to provide a structure for the countless epic battles. It has familiar tropes — the gang leader overthrown by his untrustworthy second-in-command, the mysterious outsider who knows more than he says, the humble blacksmith who tries to remain neutral among all the gang warfare until something too precious to ignore is taken from him \u2013 but they are used mostly as a shorthand to make the storytelling more efficient.<\/p>\n

What really matters are the fights, and they do not disappoint. There\u2019s wirework, bloodspouts, and bizarre weapons aplenty here, and if that\u2019s what you love, you are in for a treat. From the mundane (swords and guns) to the mystical (a man whose skin turns to brass whenever someone strikes him), everything is dialed up at least a couple of notches. These fights are packed with references to other martial arts films, too, invoking both classic and obscure examples of the genre.<\/p>\n

The performances range from solid to excellent, although because this is a B-movie, \u201cexcellent\u201d means something a little different here than usual. Veterans Lucy Liu and Russell Crowe give wonderful demonstrations of how to be awesome in this kind of flick: both are relaxed and seem to be enjoying themselves enormously. RZA handles himself just fine as the blacksmith at the heart of the story — he errs on the side of seriousness, but because he\u2019s one of the good guys, it works. The rest of the cast commit entirely to their roles, including the ludicrous ones, and it\u2019s fabulous.<\/p>\n

Really, almost every scene in \u201cThe Man with the Iron Fists\u201d feels like co-writers RZA and Eli Roth did their level best to pack as much awesome into it as possible. Yes, it\u2019s a ridiculous movie. There\u2019s approximately zero authenticity in terms of history or culture, and it\u2019s easy to complain that hip-hop music has no place in a martial arts flick set in historical China. But this is not a movie for sticklers or purists, this is a movie for people who like their genres mashed, who like their fights preposterously bloody, and who prefer their stories predictably epic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The moment the opening credits for \u201cThe Man with the Iron Fists\u201d start to roll, you can tell exactly what kind of movie it is. There\u2019s an explanatory voiceover and a massive fight, paused periodically for over-saturated, old-school-style still frames for each credit — and the credits are all in both English and Chinese. By the time it got to \u201cQuentin Tarantino Present\u201d (sic), I was sold. This is an homage to Hong Kong action flicks and exploitation films, a blenderized rendition of every trope and camera shot we\u2019ve seen and loved a hundred times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[41,74,42,92],"class_list":["post-2110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-actionfestorama-2","tag-awesome","tag-genremash-2","tag-rated-r"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/TheManWithTheIronFists.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2oSX4-y2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2110"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2113,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110\/revisions\/2113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}