mgmax Review of The Man with the Iron Fists

The Man with the Iron Fists (2012)

Worst movie of the 2010s so far

[1/10 · 9 September 2013]

It's all about having the right friends, which is how RZA, who cannot write, act or direct, got an Orson Welles-like triple threat debut. Normally this is where I would tell you what the plot is about, but 5 minutes into it you've had more opening narration than Dune yet are still completely baffled as to why the clan which has been hired to safeguard the gold apparently plans to rob itself of the gold which someone else has after all. So let's ignore the plot, which is full of such bafflements (why can an R-rated movie show countless eviscerations but not breasts? what is Russell Crowe doing here? what weight loss plan did he use after this to get down to Jor-El's size?) It is a kung fu mishmashup a la Tarantino, borrowing a number of things directly from Kill Bill but with none of its light-fingered thievery, but what it's about, if anything, is letting a rapper pose as a kung fu master who can float through the air and kick butt despite the fact that he lost his arms halfway through the movie. That's how he becomes the man with the iron fists but, as my son said, "If your movie is called The Man With the Iron Fists, shouldn't he use his iron fists before the last five minutes of the movie?" Basically a numbing parade of endless "give me a break" CGI-driven fight scenes interrupted by cardboard dialogue in the service of an incomprehensible plot that isn't going anywhere you care about getting to, this not only suggests that RZA shouldn't give up his day job, but the lackluster, uninteresting choice of music on the track calls into question his contributions to Kill Bill and strongly suggest that Tarantino was in charge of that department on his film, too.