'The Man With The Iron Fists' review by Captain Raptor

'The Man With The Iron Fists' review by Captain Raptor

In situations like this, where the only film I'd consider watching at cinemas is Die Hard Another Day (or whatever the fuck they're calling this one) and I haven't seen a new film to review, I'm going to review something I watched on DVD through the week. Besides, nobody wants to hear me talk about a mindless action film like Live Fast, Die Hard anyway. With that in mind, here's The Man With The Iron Fists.

This film came to me with all the good will in the world; produced by Tarantino, one would expect a hot pile of exuberant action madness like Planet Terror, and that's what we get to a degree. The film's action sequences are sublime, each one involving slow-motion, backflips, kung-fu, and far more blood than is possibly contained within the human body. However, Planet Terror had a comical sense of self-awareness and you know that everybody making the film knew it was dumb, but decided to have an excellent time with it. In some senses, The Man With The Iron Fists just feels like a bad film. RZA (co-writer, director and star) made the smart decision to keep the plot simple (There is gold. People use violence to obtain the gold), allowing him to free up the time to use for henchmen getting punched to death instead. As you'd expect, the downside to this smorgasbord of over-the-top violence is that the characterisation and acting is mostly awful. As it tends to, redemption comes in the form of Russell Crowe as the fantastically named Jack Knife, an English mercenary based on RZA's fellow Wu-Tang Clan member Ol' Dirty Bastard. While Mr Knife lacks the sheer insanity of the legendarily enigmatic/mentally disturbed ODB, he makes up for it with the the swaggering confidence and characteristic penchant for violence and women. Jack Knife is a ridiculous characters, and Crowe takes the opportunity to really overact and make the most of the part, as does Lucy Liu as scheming whorehouse owner Madame Blossom. 

The other actors, however, is where the film starts to come apart. RZA's lack of experience as an actor is incredibly evident, and while this doesn't matter in scenes where he punches a man's eye out, it becomes grating and distracting during his limp, lifeless narration, or in in the intermissions between the violence where his character needs to seem happy, or sad, or like he understands what an emotion is. The rest of the cast (in particular main villain Silver Lion, played by Catwoman's Byron Mann) is no better, with every line delivered like they don't understand how to talk, and you get the feeling that most people on-screen don't actually know how deliberately ridiculous everything they're doing is. Ultimately, however, this film is about actions, not words, so the standard of acting is not supposed to be particularly high - not in the Transformers or Expendables sense where it's deemed perfectly acceptable to have no acting talent or decent writing because you threw in a few explosions, but more because The Man With The Iron Fists has some of the most anarchic and creative action to ever be captured on film. The movie has some of the most inventive methods of stabbing people I've ever seen (From Jack Knife's revolving blade that also fires bullets to a suit of armour made mostly out of knives) and RZA understands that up-close and personal violence involving melee weapons, palms and feet is far more interesting to watch than shooting things and blowing them up. As mind-blowingly brilliant as these scenes are, they are to some extent few and far between. There's still a good 40 minutes of poor exposition and abysmal performing if your remove the action scenes and the Crowe/Liu combo, and the film needed to go the whole distance and cut out these section to concentrate more on what it knows it can do well, which is soaking the screen in blood.

At the end of the day, whether or not to recommend this film entirely depends on what type of person you are. If the idea of watching a man made of gold throw a knife-tongued prostitute into a mirror amuses you, then this is certainly the film for you. If you need more than this to satisfy your viewing experience, I suggest you try something else. It's Planet Terror without the humour and same level of acting ability. It's really dumb, and technically it isn't a good film, but for the right type of person, this film could be the best two hours of your week.