The Man with the Iron Fists (2012)
Starring: RZA,
Russell Crowe, Lucy Liu, Rick Yune, Byron Mann, Jamie Chung, Dave Bautista,
Cung Le, with cameos from Pam Grier, Gordon Liu, Andrew Lin, Chen Kuan Tai,
Leung Kar Yan, and Daniel Wu
Director: RZA
Action Director: Corey Yuen Kwai
There’s no doubt that the American rap group The Wu Tang Clan likes kung fu
movies. I mean, it’s in the name. All throughout “Enter the Wu Tang” you have
songs that sample dialog from movies like Shaolin and Wu Tang and The Five Deadly Venoms. And that aesthetic continued into their later albums
and many of their members’ solo albums. I suppose it was only inevitable that
at some point, one of them would try to make his own kung fu movie. I suppose
the RZA, who had the most clout—he’s a producer, composer (including for
movies, like Ghost Dog), rapper—and is a legitimate martial artist, was
the one most likely to go forward with such an endeavor. The question is: would
his years of kung fu fandom translate into making a good kung fu movie?
Somewhere in China during the Qing Dynasty is a place known as Jungle Village.
The place is home to a number of kung fu clans: like the Lion Clan, the Hyena
Clan, and the Wolf Clan. The clans are frequently at war with each other, no
matter how much the supporting characters try to tell us otherwise. The Lion
Clan is currently being led by Gold Lion (Chen Kuan Tai, of The Killer
Constable and Iron Monkey). Gold Lion has received orders from the
provincial governor to help safeguard a gold shipment that will be passing
through the area. Unfortunately, talk of gold excites greedy minds and Gold
Lion is assassinated. That leaves the clan in the hands of Silver Lion (Byron
Mann, of Street Fighter and Belly of the Beast) and Bronze Lion
(Cung Le, of Bodyguards and Assassins and Dragon Eyes).
News of Golden Lion’s death reaches his son, Zen “The X Blade” Yi (Rick Yune,
of The Fast and the Furious and Die Another Day). Zen Yi leaves
his lover, Chi Chi (played by the appropriately-named Zhu Zhu, of “Marco Polo”
and Cloud Atlas), behind and heads to Jungle Village for some good ol’
fashioned revenge. Silver Lion sends assassins out to stop him, but to no
avail. So, he brings out the big guns in the form of Brass Body (Dave Bautista,
of Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy), a hulking giant whose invincible armor
technique allows him to transform parts of his body into brass, rendering him
invulnerable to attack. Brass Body is given the order to kill Zen Yi as soon as
he arrives in town.
And what of our main star, the RZA? Well, he plays a character named Thaddeus Smith,
although everybody refers to him as simply “Blacksmith.” Thaddeus is a former
slave who fled the States after accidentally killing a guy who refused to
recognize his free papers. He now works as a blacksmith, producing all sorts of
gnarly weapons for the rival clans. His dream is to save up enough money to buy
the freedom of his favorite prostitute, Lady Silk (Jamie Chung, of Dragon
Ball: Evolution). Silk works at a brothel subtly called The Pink Blossom,
run by Lucy Liu (of Shanghai Noon and Charlie’s Angels).
While initially aloof from the main action, Thaddeus gets dragged into the
conflict when he rescues Zen Yi from an assassination attempt. While Lady Silk
is nursing Zen Yi back to health, Thaddeus is found out by the Lions, who slice
off his arms when he refuses to reveal Zen Yi’s whereabouts. He is rescued by
Captain Jack Knife (Gladiator’s Russell Crowe), an Englishman who’s in
village presumably to smoke opium and bang as many prostitutes as he can,
although he does have ulterior motives. Jack and Thaddeus’ assistants forge a
pair of iron arms for the latter, and together with Zen Yi they team up to take
down the corrupted Lion Clan.
In its general contours, The Man with the Iron Fists feels like
something that would have been produced by the Shaw Brothers back in the late
1970s. The film is teeming with references to old school kung fu movies and
even contemporary Hong Kong cinema. During a sequence set at a Peking Opera,
you can hear a female singer (Triple Threat’s Celina Jade) crooning
Sally Yeh’s song from The Killer[1].
The iron arms angle is sort of an inversion of Sun Chien getting iron legs in The Crippled Avengers. Dave Bautista’s “brass body” technique is a fairly common
trope, having been used in movies like Shaolin Martial Arts; Invincible
Armor; and Born Invincible, among many others. Rival clans fighting
each other for mastery is standard wuxia procedure. Cameos by Chen Kuan
Tai, Leung Kar Yan (playing the head of the Hyena Clan early on), and Gordon
Liu (playing a Shaolin abbot) drive the whole “kung fu movie homage” angle
home.
I have read in different places that the movie had about four hours or so of
usable footage before being edited down to its final length of 95 minutes. That
would explain how some characters seem important, only to disappear early on
(ex. Zen Yi’s lover, Chi Chi). It would also explain why RZA would go through
any trouble to get Pam Grier to play his mother, only for her to show up
onscreen for a couple of seconds. The closing credits suggest she had a bigger
role, but I’m guessing it ended on the cutting room floor. I also take it that
much of the action was also cut, which is strange, considering this is a kung
fu movie. But we’ll discuss that in a moment.
Where the story tends to falter is how unimportant the titular character is to the story itself. You could have written out the Blacksmith from the story and the movie still would have made a fair amount of sense. The Blacksmith spends much of the film aloof from the main external conflict, and it isn’t until an hour in that he becomes the titular fighter. Moreover, there is not much time dedicated to showing us how a fugitive (freed) slave might become a kung fu dynamo. We see some of his time at Shaolin, but there are no training sequences to show us how he might throw down with powerful opponents later on. Like other aspects of the movie, those scenes might have been filmed, only to be cut from the final product.
While the film looks pretty good and boasts solid production values, there are a number of aesthetic choices that I have to question. The fact that the Lion Clan strut around town with poofy lion mane hairdos is silly, considering that the film is set in the Qing Dynasty. Queues were the law, folks. They would be put to death for breaking that law. The Wolf and Hyena clan members look refugees from a Chinese cave man movie, rather than something you might see in 19th century China. And just wear does the RZA find a black leather jacket just a few minutes before the climax begins? The juxtaposition of rap music and orchestral movie scores is especially jarring here. Go for one, or go for the other. I love the Wu Tang’s music. But remixing “Shame on a N****” to an orchestral score while two characters have a bloody fight scene is just…sorta odd.
I’m glad
that the RZA got some Hong Kong talent for the action, namely Corey Yuen.
Sadly, Core Yuen’s work has been very hit or miss since the start of the
2000s and here it’s largely miss. I’m not sure how culpable he is, however. As
I understand it, lots of fight footage did not make it into the final product.
Moreover, this might have been the decision of producer Eli Roth (Hostel
and Cabin Fever), who wanted to emphasize the gore instead of the
fighting. While it makes sense that Roth would want the balance in that direction,
it sure makes the movie disappointing from a fight perspective.
Of the fights that made it into the film, the only one that really comes close to working is the one between the Gemini Twins (Blacksheep Affair’s Andrew Lin and Cold War’s Grace Huang) and the Lion Clan. Those two play a pair of sword-wielding assassins who fight in tandem—Corey copies liberally from City Hunter and Half a Loaf of Kung Fu—and do all sorts of moves together. They even wield special swords that can join together at the tips so the two can perform crazy wire stunts. That fight is pretty cool and is a high point of the action. Other action sequences tend to suffer too much from the usual villains: shaky cam, too many cuts, and in this case, bad lighting. I’m not sure if I should blame cinematographer Chan Chi-Ying (The Bullet Vanishes; Detective D) or editor Joe D’Augustine (Death Proof and the Kill Bill movies) for the action looking as disappointing as it does.
I’m also
not sure who to blame for the finale being as underwhelming as it is. It
certainly looks good on paper: an army of hookers in black leather armed with
chainsaw-esque silk scarves fighting off an entire clan while Rick Yune fights
Byron Mann in a hall of mirrors, Enter the Dragon style and the RZA
fights a brass-skinned Dave Bautista. That should be one of the greatest fight
scenes, ever. It is not. Part of the reason is that too much is going on, so it
ends up as less than the sum of its parts. The Yune-Mann fight is less of a
real fight and more a quickie rip-off of other, better movies. For all his
real-life training, the RZA shows off little actual kung fu. And
photography/editing during the hooker portion of the finale is just too
chaotic. Once again, there might have been more and better action in the
original cut, but as we’ll probably never get a Director’s Cut, I’ll have to
declare it a major FAIL for everybody involved. In the end, fan cred and good
intentions do not a good movie make.
[1] - The Killer is mentioned by
name in the dialog that precedes the song “The 7th Chamber” on the
Wu Tang Clan’s first album. Dialog from the movie is also sampled several times
in Raekwon’s first solo album, “Only Built for Cuban Linx.”
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