“Power belongs to no one”
Quentin Tarantino and the RZA came into contact, professionally, for the first time during the production of Kill Bill Vol. 1 where the RZA was able to lend his musical talents to make Tarantino’s neo Eastern exploitation cinematic jaunt that much more hyper realized. Now Tarantino is able to lend his hand in helping the RZA’s dream of recreating what made Hong Kong cinema so beloved back in the 60s, with the likes of the Shaw Brothers and many other production houses. Some classics such as Come Drink With Me, Five Deadly Venoms and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin are the best examples of what RZA and co. were searching for but obviously were unable to master.
The Man With the Iron Fists reeks of an amateur’s hand. Just as Edgar Wright’s A Fistful of Fingers or Rian Johnson’s Ninja Ko both were these filmmakers developing their own styles by imitating that which they loved and admitting to their limitations by doing so, this movie feels as if RZA – while on a much larger scale – is testing out the waters by starting with his first point of cinematic reference, i.e. Kung Fu cinema. In that regard I’m willing to forgive it and consider it a mulligan – assuming that his future projects show the growth that we hope all filmmakers will have in their careers.
The film has a story that lost itself about half an hour into the film. While being critical of a kung fu film for its story may be harsh it’s still valid, for the main point that where those classic genre entries failed to match up in intriguing and believable plot twists they made up for in characters we cared about and enjoyable action sequences. This film contains none of those elements.
While we do see the characters such as Bronze Lion (Cung Lee), Brass Body (Dave Bautista), Madam Blossom(Lucy Lui), Zen Yi (Rick Yune), Jack Knife (Russell Crowe) and Blacksmith (RZA) who all possess their own skill set in order to make for an interesting eclectic selection for any fighting video game I feel that the film lost itself in having too many plot lines to amalgamate. There’s the story of Blacksmith’s love of Lady Silk (Jamie Chung); the gold coming through Jungle Village; the plot to steal the gold (eventually by each person that walks on screen); Jack Knife’s sex crazed vacation in the area; and then the eventual revenge plot of Blacksmith against a lot of people. While not many of these stories individually are drawn out to the point of each being their own opus, it is notable as to how much of a distraction it is from the action and how much time is wasted on developing the one thing that is important; which is getting Blacksmith to that final moment where he confronts the Lions and Brass Body in the Pink Blossom. There’s even a flashback scene involving a highly convoluted origin of the Blacksmith and how he came to be in Jungle Village, but honestly it takes too long and when we’re forced to come in and out of this dream like sequence it’s distracting.
So while I take my time and complain about story, directing faults and too many characters, we’re immediately left with one – and the most important – question to ask of an action film; was the action good? I don’t believe it was. While I was thrown aback in the opening sequence where Bronze Lion is making waste of a random group of people as it had its pacing down right and with the use of some Wu-Tang Clan-esque music from RZA himself I was geared and ready to go for the rest of the film. However, I never had that feeling return again. Even in the final confrontation between Blacksmith and Brass Body it devolved into too much of a cartoon to wow me in any way and became a super hero film without a lot of the polish that we’ve come to expect from them.