The Man With the Iron Fists: Cat Meat

This week I was asked by my editor to review The Man With The Irion Fists, directed by RZA. I thought, “well, I like karate movies and I LOVE Wu-Tang, so this will have to be at least somewhat awesome. (for you white dweebs who don’t know, RZA is the Emmy winning music producer of The Wu-Tang Clan) I mean Songs like “C.R.E.A.M.” and “Its Yours” can still make me push my pants half way down my butt, lean my car seat back, turn the volume all the way up on my crappy car stereo system, and mean-mug soccer moms. And if RZA can still make me, the honkiest of honkies, feel like an OG, then he can do no wrong, right?

WRONG. Granted maybe I’ve just gotten too old and mature to enjoy this stuff, but then again last Friday night I watched The Matrix, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and 13 Assassins, all while picking off the onions, peppers, and mushrooms of my DiGornio Pizza and crushing a jug of Mountain Dew. So I think we can rule out that being too mature will ever be an issue for me regarding anything.

In The Man with the Iron Fists… jeez, let’s just go with “MWTIF” from now on. In TMWTIF, RZA stars as a Christian, Buddhist former-slave who makes weapons in some feudal Asian village. The movie is basically about him and his prostitute girlfriend trying to make enough money to one day leave the village, and a bunch of other people fighting over power and gold. Or at least I think that’s what it was about. This movie was so horribly edited and written that I wonder why they even bothered writing a script for it at all. It’s basically just 93 minutes of people Karate chopping at each other—and that’s it.

Instead of a preview they should have just had an infomercial to promote the movie. I can just see A CGI replica of infomercial legend Billy Mays yelling,  ”COME LOOK AT PEOPLE KARATE CHOPPING STUFF. THEY’LL CHOP PEOPLE, THEY’LL CHOP TABLES AND WALLS, WE EVEN SOMEHOW PAID RUSSEL CROWE TO COME CHOP STUFF TOO!! CALL NOW AND FOR THE LOW, LOW PRICE OF $19.99 YOU CAN WATCH ACTORS CHOP STUFF IN 3-D!”

That’s actually a more accurate synopsis of this movie.

In addition to RZA, also trying to act out this WWF-level dialogue and plot is Lucy Liu (who is still unbelievably sexy, even though Ally McBeal was like a century ago), Russel Crowe, and an actual WWF star named Bautista (okay wrestling aficionados, I know it’s not the WWF anymore, and I think this “Bautista” fellow might actually be a part of another wrestling organization, but I want you to ask yourself, who gives a crap?) I would make a joke here about all the actors clearly phoning it in, but that would be an insult to the hard working people at the phone company.

 RZA doesn’t even bother changing his Brooklyn accent for this period piece. ‘Yo dese, up norf type cats is trying to steal our treasure, son!”  Mandarin Ebonics ya’ll! And apparently there were plenty of ESL teachers in late 1800’s Asia (the writers never decide to fill us in on this because everyone in Asia does karate and dresses like a samurai obviously) , because everyone aside from a few randoms speak English. Normally, since I hate reading, I would be okay with not having to read subtitles, if it wasn’t for the people constantly switching from English and Chinese or Japanese or whatever, or if there was some sort of rules to it. Like English = whatever they are speaking.  But that is obviously too much to ask from this writing team.

Despite all that, I would still be willing to give this movie a chance if it just gave me some cool fight scenes, but unfortunately RZA fails to even give me that, because the fight scenes here are as unimaginative as they are unbelievable.

I know that ever since movies like The Matrix and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, the new thing in Kung Fu movies is to fly people around on ropes so they can do backflips while kicking people. And if it’s done right, like those movies did, it can look very eloquent, cool, and at least somewhat believable.

Look, I have my doubts. Could Keeanu Reeves even dunk on an 8 foot basketball goal? Probably not. So I know he’s got ropes attached to every inch of his body if he’s even doing a cartwheel. But at least the Wachowski’s (directors of the Matrix) made it look half way plausible. In Crouching Tiger, the fight scenes are so graceful and artistic that you forget how ridiculously unrealistic they are. But now-a-days, fight/stunt coordinators have gotten so lazy and out of control with this stuff that even I get bored with them, and MORTAL FREAKING COMBAT IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE MOVIES, so that’s saying something.

It’s like Taco Bell. I know that underneath the tomatoes, sour cream, delicious, cheesy sauce, and the greatest marinade in the history of the world is probably cat meat. But at least the managers are smart enough to not let me see the cats being brought out of the fridge. As far as the fight scenes are concerned in TMWTIF, it’s almost like RZA is chopping up the cats right in front of you at the drive-Thru.

In summary…wait, why does this even need a proper conclusion paragraph? Just don’t go see this movie. Now if you’ll excuse me I have a serious hankerin’ for a Cheesy Gordita Crunch and an XXL Grilled Stuffed Steak Burrito. Adios, muchachos.

^{Note: reviewers opinions of Taco Bell do not reflect the opinions of the editor or of thescriptlab.com. Especially in regard to possible legal ramifications of accusing them of using cat meat. Thank you kindly. –The Editor}