The Man With the Iron Fists (2012) The RZA

[Drunken Monk]

i don't like RAP and that's a fact

don't like my face being attacked

I like a few RAP so how do you do

give me a Will Smith & I'll sing it to you

if I took to RAP what would you do

would that make us real buddies too

RAP RAP RAP are you 'TALKING TO ME'

nope nope nope I ain't talking to you I am 'TALKING TO ME'

now that you know I don't like RAP

are you going to stop are you going stop all that crap

GD Y-Y

Wait, I'm confused. Do you not like rap? And what's the correlation between hip hop and facial attacks?

[ShaOW!linDude]

The question is did you have THIS....?

Robin called. He was wondering who made off with the Bat-controller for the Bat-box.

[GOLDEN DRAGON YIN-YANG]

Wait, I'm confused. Do you not like rap? And what's the correlation between hip hop and facial attacks?

LOL! I do love poetry you see. RAP is poetry would you not say.

(i don't like RAP and that's a fact

don't like my face being attacked)

What I mean here is so many dudes will RAP on a bus or as you pass by being purposely arrogant as they and you know that they are doing so to put fear into you by type casting themselves as hoodlums and using RAP as a tool of annoyance and aggression.

Comprende DM

GD Y-Y

.

[GOLDEN DRAGON YIN-YANG]

Think of this the seeds of RAP are as old as time.

How many kung fu movies can you think of wear the beggar comes in with their clappers and sounding a beat begin a RAP session to entertain the patrons to gain a coin or some food.

hey hey there you all today

I am a poor beggar coming your way

my tummy is hungry my throat is dry and I am about to cry

give me a coin or some food and drink and then I will wave bye bye

happy again and sad no more

your kindness will save me and I will be out the door

GD Y-Y

i

[Drunken Monk]

LOL! I do love poetry you see. RAP is poetry would you not say.

(i don't like RAP and that's a fact

don't like my face being attacked)

What I mean here is so many dudes will RAP on a bus or as you pass by being purposely arrogant as they and you know that they are doing so to put fear into you by type casting themselves as hoodlums and using RAP as a tool of annoyance and aggression.

Comprende DM

GD Y-Y

.

I was just busting your balls a little. No hard feelings, I assure you.

Indeed, rap is poetry to a large extent, which is why I roll my eyes when people say it's "fast talking." Different strokes for different folks and all that.

[sifu iron perm]

the reviews came in..

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/review-the-man-with-the-iron-fists-a-noble-effort-overstuffed-rza-20121101

http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/the-man-with-the-iron-fists/

http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/the-man-with-the-iron-fists/

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201211/the-rza-man-with-the-iron-fists-wu-tang-clan

[Drunken Monk]

the reviews came in..

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/review-the-man-with-the-iron-fists-a-noble-effort-overstuffed-rza-20121101

http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/the-man-with-the-iron-fists/

http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/the-man-with-the-iron-fists/

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201211/the-rza-man-with-the-iron-fists-wu-tang-clan

There's a distinct, "It's good for a directorial debut of someone who's a rapper" feel to all those reviews. They seem to echo a "compenent but nothing special" standpoint.

[TibetanWhiteCrane]

Not overly positive, I would say. But most def the kinds of reviews I expected.

[sifu iron perm]

it drops tomorrow..

for us in the UK another damn month!

I will avoid the bootleg downloads!

[sifu iron perm]

Not overly positive, I would say. But most def the kinds of reviews I expected.

the original cut submitted was over 4 hours..Robert Tai in the house!

the rza wanted it to be spliced into 2 films..big boys said no way!!

[QueMuchita]

Not the best reviews although most the people who gave ordinary reviews also got a lot of their facts wrong.

[bigrogie]

I'm going see this now and have a pop corn lunch!

OK I saw it. It was just OK for me. Slightly entertaining. The gore is totally unnecessary and adds nothing to the movie. The blood looks like red wine...... Of course there's lots of CGI and the undercranking is just too much. Too many fight scenes are filmed too close so you can hardly see the moves. Some cool weapons. Overall a disappointment for me. 5/10. Would have rated 6/10 if the fight scenes were better filmed. Maybe the full version (almost 4 hrs) will be better.

[blue_skies]

Am I the only person on this forum who doesn't like hip hop?

Much of the recognition of Wu Tang comes from people who were already fans.

Another person who doesn't like hip-hop! I also agree with your comment that they are barely mainstream. I was vaguely aware of them, seem to remember some rap video featuring prehistoric cave men with some really shady wire fu… And if it wasn't for that video I probably wouldn't even have a clue who they were.

I also agree most of the recognition, optimism and general hype is coming from Wu-Tang fans. I bet if we saw the same clips, press releases and other information on the Internet without RZA people would have written this off as complete shizzle long ago. The love for this guy's music has definitely clouded people's judgement

[GOLDEN DRAGON YIN-YANG]

T M W T I F opened in my hometown today.

After reading bigrogie's short review I will not waste my money on this peace of junk.

Sad is it not.

Like someone suggested Wo Ping would have maybe done a whole lot better.

A golden opportunity for a a kung fu revival gone wrong. And W/ all the F'n HYPE!

I think if RZA would have had 'WE ALL' as advisers he would have painted a much prettier picture.

I was going to take my chances, as it was not screened for our local movie critics, one of whom, is a great fan of KFM.

Very disappointing.!

GD Y-Y

[waywardsage]

Just saw it this afternoon. As a dyed in the wool Kung Fu film fan and Shaw Brothers fan, I gotta say it was terrible. Terrible scriptwriting, acting, cinematography. The whole film is an absolute mess. All of the homages were awful. The whole pacing of the film was dreadful and the over use of narration to stitch together some sort of story made me bored to tears.

I honestly can't see how Russle Crowe would have attached himself to this film. It's incomprehensibly bad. It's not even good in a spoof kinda way like Black Dynamite was for Blacksplotation films. It's like watching a film that a teenage kid right out of high school would make if he was handed millions of dollars.

Ugg..I hoped for more. But I'm not surprised. The trailer looked awful. Even my friend who's just an average movie going guy who likes action said it was one of the worst films he's seen in years.

The cinematography was terrible too. Half of the time the shots were out of focus and you couldn't see peoples faces. The scenes were blocked in a way that they made no sense and weren't even eye catching.

[sifu iron perm]

damn!

how were the old boys in it? Gordon and beardy?

[OpiumKungFuCracker]

How can a movie with a title, The Man With The Iron Fist be bad???? I just don't get that???

[QueMuchita]

I spoke to a few people who have seen it, their reviews all varied from very good to just ok, nobody said it was terrible. Consistent things people said was that it looked really good but the acting was ordinary.

[waywardsage]

I love old skool Shaw's. And this was just a cardboard imitation of it. If anyone says the acting was good, I would question their judgement oh what they think good acting is.

I wanted to like it guys. I really did. But the mountain of boringness/terribleness just piled up to being a steamer.

It's pretty bad if you bore a kung fu film watcher to death. That's pretty much my definition of a bad movie.

[daTOAD]

Saw it yesterday, first show. Was actually surprised by the variety in the audience( a lady who looked to be in her 60s was one seat over from me by herself). Nice crowd for a first show also. The movie was goodokentertainingkindof. It did feel like the old school sword flicks (not kung fu or shapes) in some spots. More Gu Long/ Sun Chung than Liu. Rza took the throw the whole kitchen sink approach which kinda hurt him. Theres to much going on. Some cool ideas and stuff I could see in future films, but with so many characters it was hard to follow story at times and care about characters as much as you shouldve( like i said Gu Long). More time instead should have been spent on narrowing the characters and creating memorable fight scenes IMO. The main bad guy was annoying also. This would be okay if he was a top fighter, but he's not(or at least didnt show it). Overall this could have been great( characters and story), but in the end for me, a HUGE Wu and Rza fan, Its on the level of Empire of Assasins. Im not mad at it for the action choreo because to me its no different than all the other wu xia coming out. If you want the top notch choreo you need the Ip Man's and the new Keannu Reeves flick. I've been watching these movies since the 70s and collecting for over 20 years and am cool with the fact that the golden era of martial films(like hip hop) was something special and can never be duplicated, thats why i still watch the old flicks. Also the its written and delivered like the old English dubs, so if you're one of the people thta hates dubs, you'll unfortunately probably have a problem with the acting.

[daTOAD]

To be clear, Its not a bad movie , just not great. Something that might grow on me after multiple views.

[daisho2004]

OK I just got back from seeing this movie today and daTOAD review was pretty much spot on. I enjoyed the movie the action scenes weren't bad. The main problem I had was I don't like how they go back in forth from Chinese to English. I would prefer they stick to Chinese and just show the subtitles. Rza is a good writer but he isn't an actor yet. Overall I enjoyed it for what it was and it surpassed what I thought it was going to be, it did pay homage to the classic Kung-Fu movies and even used a song from John Woo's The Killer in it, don't know if anyone caught that.

[Petie]

I ended up posting this in the review section and didn't realize there was already a thread for this. My apologies. Here's what I wrote:

The Man With the Iron Fists: Review

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So last night I went to see The Man With the Iron Fists, RZA's homage to old school kung fu flicks. Here are my brief thoughts:

The Good

1.) Some of the fights scenes are decent which is not surprising since veteran martial arts director Corey Yuen Kwai was responsible for the choreography.

2.) Russell Crowe's character is pretty entertaining.

3.) Some good cameos, chiefly Gordon Liu playing a role similar to what he did in the 36th Chamber movies (well, except the second one).

4.) Its over the top nature provides many laughs.

And...yeah..that's about it.

The Bad

1.) Though I've mentioned the decent choreography too many of the actions scenes focused on shocking the audiences with massive amounts of gore and (CGI!) blood for my taste. While I understand RZA was going for a movie more in the tradition of Chang Cheh films like 5 Venoms or The One-Armed Swordsman movies where the emphasis is on the violent aspects of fighting, I personally prefer classic kung fu films where the accent is on the martial arts movements themselves such as the majority of Lau Kar-Leung's (Liu Chia Liang) movies.

2.) Though passing itself off as a throwback to old school kung fu movies there's actually very little kung fu in the film beyond a few references to stances such as towards the end when Bautista (Brass Man) goes into the Tiger Stance but then doesn't actually do any of its forms.

3.) For a man who purportedly has grown up and loved these movies RZA failed to list Corey Yuen Kwai in the opening credits as the action director...inexcusable. In fairness this may have been something dictated to RZA by his financiers. Still, as important as action directors are to, well, action films (!), they should always get top billing in the credits...opening and closing.

4.) RZA simply doesn't work as a leading action man. He simply has no commanding presence whatsoever. He claims that he trained in Hung Gar for an hour a day for two months in preparation for the film. However, his fighting in the movie is basically Western boxing and NOT any kind of kung fu style.

The Ugly

So as you can see I didn't really care for this film all that much. I have to admit that I did come to this already prejudiced against RZA. I've never cared for any of his commentaries that have been featured on some of the Dragon Dynasty DVDs, especially the one for a favorite of mine The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. I've always been a bit bitter that I had to listen to a RZA commentary for one of my all time favorite films instead of the knowledgeable Bey Logan. RZA comes across to me as someone who, while surely having a love for this genre, doesn't know as much about it as he seems to think he does, something this movie just reinforces. But I do respect and appreciate what RZA was trying to accomplish. It was a noble effort just not a very well executed one.

Rating: 2.3 of out 5

http://inthe37thchamber.blogspot.com

[tdb]

I saw the movie this evening. The movie comes across as recycled or as one big homage, but that's not being completely fair, perhaps. A lot of those same elements have been used in plenty of wu xia/martial arts movies over the years.

** Some spoilers **

Gold shipment. Road side tea house/restaurant ambush. Fight at an inn (Dragon Inn, heh)/restaurant. Brothel. Warring clans. Enuchs. White haired villain (who was also a enuch, I think). All the women characters die. Shaolin Temple...

** End Spoilers **

As for references to other movies...there was one obvious reference to Enter the Dragon and the Dragon Inn call out. Nothing else occured to me. He was busy checking off the genre tropes and as you saw above, he got quite a few of them. He probably would have been better off going for a straight wu xia movie than this hybrid that never quite meshes. Still, it's a sincere effort and certainly worth a watch.

[reason108]

With the mixed reviews coming out it gives me some hope. I was expecting it to be horrible. But, if its just bad or ok or whatever then I have to really think about whether I want to spend $10 to see it or wait until it hits video. Perhaps I should wait until the 4 hr version comes out then?

But, just reading what everyone has written about it, it seems to have turned out as I had feared it would. I just think that RZA should have given POPS the directors chair and be done with it.