Director: Roel Reine
Notable Cast: RZA, Dustin Nguyen, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa,
Carl Ng, Rugenia Yuan, Pim Bubear, Simon Yin
"You see, gentlemen. You just walked into a
windstorm of flying elephant shit."
While the first Man with the Iron Fists met generally
negative reaction from critics and fans alike, there is a heart to that film
which does bubble to the surface. It’s a film crafted by fans of the genre that
just had trouble getting their love to translate during the film. There are
various reasons why the first film crumbles under scrutiny (feel free to check
out my review of the film HERE) and the surprise second film, cleverly titled The
Man with the Iron Fists 2, fixes a few of these things…although it tends to
falter at some new elements too. The results? It’s another mixed effort that
spends more time being entertainingly bad then straight up entertaining.
For Thaddeus (RZA), a move of vengeance by the Lion Clan
leaves him severely wounded and floating down a river. He washes up in a small
village being run by the vicious and corrupt Beetle Clan. The village is being
worked to death in a silver mine nearby and a local leader (Nguyen) is trying
his best to stand up to them. Together they will find that it’s not only the
silver mine and corruption that is driving the village towards evil…
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| Back under the blade. |
The Man with the Iron Fists 2 contains the same heart
that the first film featured. Wu Tang mastermind and martial arts aficionado
RZA once again serves as a writer for the film and as the main star Thaddeus,
which is both a blessing and a curse once again. While he still struggles as an
actor, this sequel rightly limits his character arc to match his strengths (the
strong silent type suits him much better than the love struck and torn
individual of the first.) His writing still showcases some terrible dialogue
and obvious plot progressions that feel down right face palm predictable, but
this film learned from the attempted epic feel of the first and simplifies
everything down. We do have two protagonists and two plots that meld into one,
but it’s not needlessly complex. It’s a move that saves the film from having
too many plot holes and just enough to be hilariously silly. When you have
dialogue like the above quoted line, it’s much easier to just sit back and
enjoy the film from being a B-grade action flick instead of the attempts at
being more than that, which undercut the first film.
It’s this sense of ‘fun’ that really seems to work for this
franchise. While the dialogue and acting tend to be terrible on the surface,
the film works in that B-grade sense. Dustin Nguyen is perhaps the sole star of
the film who seems to really be trying with his acting and partnered with his
martial arts skills, is the only one that rises above the straight-to-home
video feel. Much of the secondary cast is solid enough, Carl Ng as the villain
eats up scenery with his ‘so-evil-it’s-funny’ lines (he delivers a monologue
about how hard he is to kill by referencing a prostitute that chewed off one of
his testicles), and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa plays a concerned mayor that may have
his own agenda with relative ease. Some of the family dynamics of Nguyen’s
character fall flat – not enough time to really develop his wife and daughter
relationships honestly, but it works well enough to keep the audience
entertained.
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| A villainous Ho. |
Perhaps the strangest position to the film was the lack of
strong fight choreography. The significantly reduced budget certainly hurts in
having those bigger fights, but the martial arts on display tend to be fairly
basic. Director Roel Reine knows better than to edit and zoom as much as the
first film did (which ruined a lot of the well set up action set pieces), but The
Man with the Iron Fists 2 doesn’t give him as much quality fight work to
really showcase. For a martial arts film, this is a pretty big sin that the
rest of the film simply can’t overcome. What they have in the film is fun
enough (particularly when some of the members bust out the Mantis style kung
fu), but it’s not enough to really win over the more critical martial arts
fanatics that are going to be buying this film.
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| Round 1: Fight! |
Still, if you are a fan of B-grade action the silliness of
the plot and dialogue is going to be overly entertaining. It’s not that The
Man with the Iron Fists 2 ever even attempts at being more than a modern
homage to classic kung fu with plenty of terrible one liners, gimmick riddled
plot devices, and outrageous characters, but that is its biggest saving grace.
If you are considering a purchase of the film, you already know if you are
going to find entertainment in it or not – so just go with the punches and pick
it up.
Written By Matt Reifschneider
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