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The Man With the Iron Fists (2012) The RZA


AlbertV

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just picked up the DVD tonight. I watched the theatrical cut again first, and then checked out the first of 5 deleted scenes, "the Saga of Gold Lion". here, we actually see a lot more of Chen Kuan-Tai, and a bit more of Leung Kar-Yan. immediately, I checked out the opening credits portion of the unrated cut which does feature a bit more of both of them in it, but not to the extent of the deleted scene. soon, I'll have to watch the entire unrated cut to see what else is missing, and check out the other deleted scenes, but for fans of the film or people curious to see more of the old school guys, the DVD or BD is well worth a purchase for more footage of them, and I hear there's a bit more of RZA with the Shaolin monks in the unrated cut too, so probably a bit more of Gordon Liu

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i did notice the beginning fight was longer more beardy, and the ending had some offkey subplot with that crowman character that appears early in the movie but dont see at all later on.

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A veritable feast of colourful, cartoonish, crimson-spraying camp undone by, arguably, the most wooden lead performance ever committed to celluloid. The RZA's face is practically immobile... I've seen coma patients with a greater range of expression. This guy makes Wang Yu look like Laurence Olivier! Clearly, as a director, he has some imagination, though his love of the genre is betrayed by bizarre missteps like foul-mouthed dialogue, sexual situations, and rap music pasted over CGI-dominated fight sequences. I don't remember any of those in King Boxer. Not the disaster I expected, but a very mixed bag nonetheless.

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I guess you haven't seen stone face Jet Li in 90% of his movies since BfB, or stone face Zhang Zhi Yi in The Grandmasters or stone face Johnny Hallydy in Vengeance.

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I guess you haven't seen stone face Jet Li in 90% of his movies since BfB, or stone face Zhang Zhi Yi in The Grandmasters or stone face Johnny Hallydy in Vengeance.

Jet Li's fingertip has more charisma than The RZA.

Haven't seen The Grandmasters.

Agree that Johnny Halliday wasn't good in Vengenace.

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A veritable feast of colourful, cartoonish, crimson-spraying camp undone by, arguably, the most wooden lead performance ever committed to celluloid. The RZA's face is practically immobile... I've seen coma patients with a greater range of expression. This guy makes Wang Yu look like Laurence Olivier! Clearly, as a director, he has some imagination, though his love of the genre is betrayed by bizarre missteps like foul-mouthed dialogue, sexual situations, and rap music pasted over CGI-dominated fight sequences. I don't remember any of those in King Boxer. Not the disaster I expected, but a very mixed bag nonetheless.

That's what happens when you're zooted watching these films. Dude looks like he's in a permanent MJ stupor.

Not taking anthing away from those who indulge-however, if you're attempting to reach the masses, your message needs to be clear.

Hell, even Crowe looked stoned out of his dome!

:ooh:

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Russell Crowe is my favorite actor in any role. This is a very different part for him. I am sure he had great fun making this movie. He sits a horse very well in any era. He is one of the great actors of our time.

does this sound genuine to anyone or are Hollywood faking Amazon reviews?

If your dad liked to sneak you to Kung Fu movies in the 70s behind your moms back, then you'll like this over the top movie. That genre wouldn't win over any of the "I liked the book better" crowd and it doesn't attempt to. I persoanlly own the HD download of this movie. I would say at the very least, if you like martial arts movies it's worth a rental.

another 5 star review!

AND I liked it better than Django Unchained. I saw this one twice in theaters. I imagine it had low ratings because of the cheesy dialog - but I personally thought RZA's delivery of it was genre savvy and effective. The plot was fluid and action scenes satisfying to the core. I'm really picky about action films I like, and I feel this one fits nicely on my shelf next to the Kill Bill volumes and Boondock Saints. The urban soundtrack was a cherry on top.

The love of Karate flicks gets my adrenalin going and being a part of the martial arts world I loved it even more. Lucy Liu you go on girl!!!!

I would recommend this movie to anyone who like Qunton Tarentino movies. Always hits hit off the charts. Might buy this and add it to my Martial Arts Collection.

I've been a fan of Asian Martial/acton movies and this one is a rare find. Everything's fantastic from cinematography to visual effects.

World-class chop socky, November 7, 2012

By Paul F. Austin (Palm Bay, Florida United States) -

This review is from: The Man with the Iron Fists (DVD)

This is a flick that Joe Bob Briggs would love. While deficient in motor vehicle chases (no motor vehicles), no beasts (but some pretty beastly Chinese gangsters) and only two (ceramic) breasts, The Man with the Iron Fists is an excellent chop socky movie. We have spinning assassin bimbo fu, truly overwhelming Chinese Whore-Lady fu with a cast of dozens of flying Beautiful Chinese Ninja Whore-Ladies, a ex-slave Hero (RZA) who trades in his `fro for `fu training at the same Shaolin temple that trained John Carradine, a baddy (Dave Bautista)that turns into a brass table lamp every time someone tries to stick him (which happens a lot) and lots and _lots_ of straight and fancy kung fu. In a movie first, Russell Crowe performs Ben Wa Ball fu on one of the Chinese Whore-Ladies.

We have heads rolling, eyes rolling, hands rolling and stomachs rolling. We have a baddie dragged into the gears for a really messy exit, Squirt! At the other end of the ceramic breasts, is the lock to the Secret Tunnel and the Head Whore-Lady (Lucy Lui) thrusts a foot-long key straight in there to unlock the Hidden Door.

The scenery-chewing was awesome, especially Russell Crowe's Chinese "disguise" (coolie hat, slanty-eyed mascara). The score is excellent and subtle, bringing in references to other Manly Movies. Several times, I expected Lee Van Cleef and Clint Eastwood to stride in from stage right and left respectively.

Five Stars: Check it out.

I kid you not!

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does this sound genuine to anyone or are Hollywood faking Amazon reviews?

another 5 star review!

hehe amazon as does imdb have many insane reviews...

everyone movie. has a 0 review and perfect review.. its just absurd.

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hehe amazon as does imdb have many insane reviews...

everyone movie. has a 0 review and perfect review.. its just absurd.

it's not the 5 stars it's what is said. Sounds fake to me. raising the ratings. Amazon used to be a good and useful guide once the hype died. Now crap is rated highly. I reckon you pay foreign students for reviews for peanuts and more people buy the movies.

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Honesty, it's an interesting one to comment on. Great set design, great art design, very good cinematography and production values. Full of color. Not bleak looking like so many pictures done in recent years. Lots of characters(not a good thing here) and costumes. Rather unfocused flick. With so many familiar faces, it ended up pretty empty. The acting was bad. Mann(Silver Lion) was horrible. RZA was a block of wood. Yune, Lin Hoi and others were either bad or seemed like this was their first or second time acting. This had Daniel Wu in it, so the picture fails for that alone. Had I known he was in it, I wouldn't have watched it. Crowe was fine by me.

Yuen Kwei at the helm for action is like Daniel Wu just being in a movie for me, pass. Nothing dope. He gets too much work for what he actually ends up putting out. Tons of floating and flying and slo-mo floating and flying. Some of the early action didn't feel like i was watching a fight/action sequence. The way they were put together and edited, they looked like how you would put together a music video. There was no flow, or sense. Just looked like put together stuff. Soundfx were very soft. For a guy brought up in the old school era, it's strange that he went that route.

Great to look at. A great looking pet project. There were some good ideas there, lost in translation, so to speak. Not something I get riled over, because there's nothing there it get riled over. Watch and keep it moving, with the warning that Daniel Wu is in it(oh and the whole Yuen Kwei thing).

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OpiumKungFuCracker
I'm still trying to decide if I want to watch this movie or not.

I'm in the same position as you. If only I didn't read the reviews and comments maybe I would've seen this movie sooner.

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Secret Executioner
I'm still trying to decide if I want to watch this movie or not.

I'm in the same position as you. If only I didn't read the reviews and comments maybe I would've seen this movie sooner.

Much like you guys, I'm still trying to decide whether I wanna see this. I often run into copies of it so it won't be hard to get, but I'm still hesitating to buy it. Had I not read reviews of it on here I think I'd have bought it already.

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It was like looking for diamonds in a pile of sh*t! I`m not sure how one would recommend this film. Lucy Liu looks good and pretty much reprises her schtick from Kill Bill. As a matter of fact, I think that some of the best lines in the movie seem to be from other movies. The fight choreography sucks. Hell, I don`t know if I would even call it choreography. The plot itself is not that bad. I have read that there is an 4 hr cut or some such. Perhaps the 4hr version would be the one to watch. But, as it stands, I think that 1 * out of ***** is being generous. I think that this is a situation where the ego of the person far out weighs their talent.

ps - if you are going to watch it, just watch for how bad it is. and by bad, i mean, stinks.

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sifu iron perm

watched it once and forgot about it, terrible and very disappointing as it was made from a genuine fan and who has connects etc. Oh plus his demo clips showed plenty of potential and his videos..

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I gave it a look, didn't really like it. But I've watched bits since then, and it kind of works if you watch it as a *ridiculous* homage to martial arts films and less an actual martial arts film. And there's one bit where I could see this having been a better movie. You guys remember the bit early on where Rick Yune takes on a group of assassins at a teahouse? The sound design's great and the action and music compliment each other to--perfection. The only problem is that the scene was made in the editing room. You can tell from the way it's cut that it was all made to be in sync after the fact. But if RZA had made a movie built around well-choreographed (they wouldn't have to be great) fights with the choice of music already in mind...I would've dug the hell out of that. As is though, I really dig that scene, just for being a glimpse at what could have been a pretty cool movie.

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I finally got around to watching this and even with the bad reviews I thought I'd probably have fun with it. I was wrong.

Wasted opportunity is the best way I can sum it up. I could certainly see the passion for older Hong Kong and Japanese martial arts movies but it was just so badly put together. RZA is simply not an actor. There is no getting around it. The music did not fit the movie at all and much of the time felt out of place. But the story is probably the worst part.

This is a great example of a film that can show how important a good director is to a movie. It lets you know instantly which actors are actually good because you know they had no help from the director. Lucy Liu and Russell Crowe, for instance. Crowe actually had some fun with it and was able to pull it off. They you take Rick Yune and I was surprised by how bad he was. Even poor Pam Grier in her brief cameo during a completely unnecessary sub-plot came off looking like she had no idea what was going on.

Some cool ideas that just get lost in a horrible story with terrible directing. That's what I was left with.

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sifu iron perm
I finally got around to watching this and even with the bad reviews I thought I'd probably have fun with it. I was wrong.

Wasted opportunity is the best way I can sum it up. I could certainly see the passion for older Hong Kong and Japanese martial arts movies but it was just so badly put together. RZA is simply not an actor. There is no getting around it. The music did not fit the movie at all and much of the time felt out of place. But the story is probably the worst part.

This is a great example of a film that can show how important a good director is to a movie. It lets you know instantly which actors are actually good because you know they had no help from the director. Lucy Liu and Russell Crowe, for instance. Crowe actually had some fun with it and was able to pull it off. They you take Rick Yune and I was surprised by how bad he was. Even poor Pam Grier in her brief cameo during a completely unnecessary sub-plot came off looking like she had no idea what was going on.

Some cool ideas that just get lost in a horrible story with terrible directing. That's what I was left with.

the rza went too deep with the plot and construction of the narrative, but the film could have been saved with action/kung fu scenes..the rza had to beg santa/gordon liu to play a small part in it.

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the rza went too deep with the plot and construction of the narrative, but the film could have been saved with action/kung fu scenes..the rza had to beg santa/gordon liu to play a small part in it.

It's really too bad as it could have been so much better, and as I mentioned there were some cool ideas. Even the scene after the credits that sets up a possible sequel was trippy and looked like it was something straight out of Holy Weapon. But I agree that more kung fu is always a good thing!

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Well, you can tell that RZA is defiantly a fan of Martial Arts films. Everything is lovingly crafted to pay homage to the genre. But, its quite the weird movie. I mean, where else would you see Russel Crow go down on a hot, Chinese prostitute(Then reemerge with a mouth full of anal beads)? lol But overall, its a fun movie, with some pretty good fight scenes and decent acting. 4/5 Check it out.

 

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sifu iron perm

I walked into the cinema screen (first day UK release) with a smile and walked out with my head down in shame!!!

 

 

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Man with the Iron Fists (2012) - Wow, that was underwhelming. And I won't even talk about the rushed plot, the foggy character motivations, the acting, the gore (which is too gruesome in the first half, and then gives way to more goofy CGI blood in the second), the bizarre costumes, or the soundtrack. I'll just talk about the action. It's so weak and forgettable that I can't imagine how this could be the same guy who worked on classics like My Father is a Hero and Yes, Madam!. Crap, even Cradle 2 the Grave was a long time ago. Nothing about the action Works, and we're talking about a movie that probably has the largest proliferation of exotic weapons since the Venom Mob days. You would never know that the RZA has trained in kung fu for years watching this, because his only major fight is more about the pro-wrestling moves than exchanges of complex handwork or anything like that. The fights frequently end before they even begin and with the exception of the opening brawl, they feel like more of an excuse to throw CGI blood and shoddy FX on the screen. And don't get me started on the finale, which is a travesty, and this coming from a set-piece that features a contingente of Chinese hookers in skimpy black outfits fighting with chainsaw silk ribbons! The big, important one-on-one's never really come to pass and everything else is just hurried through. I swear it's pathetic. I respect the RZA for wanting to make a Hollywood wuxia movie, but he failed big time here.

This was my capsule review back in the day.

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10 hours ago, sifu iron perm said:

I walked into the cinema screen (first day UK release) with a smile and walked out with my head down in shame!!!

 

1 hour ago, DrNgor said:

This was my capsule review back in the day.

I started thinking that maybe I was too harsh to the movie and should give it another go, but I guess not.

I'm much more intersted in RZA's Z Chronicles where he got Robert Tai to choreograph the action, wonder if that was ever completed and if anybody's seen it.

image.png.9ec1227aae990ff683ea44d891280081.png

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