Where to begin?
The Man with the Iron Fists is supposed to be a throwback to the classic Shaw Brothers movies of the 70s and 80s, and in some ways it succeeds. Oddly historically inaccurate setting? Check. Incomprehensible plot? Check. Weird martial arts and weapons? Check. Ridiculous hair and a villain with ludicrously absurd eyebrows? Check and check.
So we're good right? Grab your popcorn, turn off your brain, and embrace the lunacy! What more could you want?
Well, how about a script editor to start?
See, there's just too much going on. There's something like six stories being told here, and the one that's supposed to be the main story is the least interesting.
Now, you might be saying that, "it's a martial arts film, the plot doesn’t matter." But as an example of how muddled the story is, there's a point about halfway through the movie where you sit through an extended flashback that explains how an escaped slave from the American South (RZA, channeling Denzel Washington at his dullest) became a blacksmith in Northern China, and it wasn't until about the middle of this badly overlong flashback that I realized that the blacksmith was supposed to be the main character of the film! That's how badly overshadowed the alleged main character and his narrative is by every other character in the film, from Russell Crowe to several of the background characters. And Crowe is obviously just phoning in his performance.
That's not to say there wasn't entertainment here. Lucy Liu steals every scene she's in, and David Bautista badly made me want to watch a film about his character, but neither of them is on screen enough to stave off the boredom.
Then we get to the fighting.
It's a martial arts film. More than that, it's a deliberate attempt to recapture the feel of the great old Shaw Brothers kung-fu epics of the drive-thru movie era. You have a bunch of actual martial artist and actors with extensive experience playing in martial arts movies being choreographed by the legendary Corey Yuen! The scenes they filmed must have been brilliant! Masterpieces of martial arts and wirework!
Then they were edited together by a bunch of Americans.
Yes, once again a possible masterpiece of action choreography becomes a seizure-inducing mess of quick cuts, close-ups, figures in shadow, and….
Goddamnit, how f@#king hard is this? There's a reason Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, and even f@#king Jean-Claude Van Damme films are considered martial arts classics, it's because you can F@#KING SEE THE FIGHTS!
But noooooo, not here in America, not anymore. Here in America we want to not see what's happening. We want to see a perfectly executed fight scene be turned into something resembling a student film on youTube. We want to see how many epileptics we can discover in the theater!
Damnit, I'm sick of writing about this. Just wait and rent it, that's the bottom line.