Before I entered the theater to watch Rza's movie "The Man with the Iron Fists", I had a couple of expectations for it. From only seeing the trailer and no review on the movie, It seemed to me that this was going to be a throwback to older martial arts/kung fu style of fighting movies. After seeing that Quentin Tarantino produced the film, it made me even more excited and could not wait to find out where this movie might go. From what I know this Rza's first film he has ever directed by himself. So, I was interested to see what he brings to the table.
As the intro of the movie starts playing I get this weird feeling that this might turn out to be a wreck. But, as it plays on I find out what kind of goals they were going for in the making of this. The overall art style through the movie ended up blowing me away. This movie looks astounding almost the whole way through it. I think that is one of the main things they were going for and you can definitely tell it has a Quentin Tarantino feel to it. The Characters and scenery have great originality and a overwhelmingly awesome feel to them. Most of the acting was actually pretty good and had some big name actors like Lucy Lu and Russell Crowe. I had a little problem caring for the main plot but, each characters stories were interesting to say the least.
The thing that made this movie even better was the soundtrack. It is mix of slow jams, rock, Chinese oriented, old west, and hip hop. It just gave the movie an over all great vibe and was satisfying. The sound effects were overall decent and did not sound to fake or stupid to ruin my experience. Most of the acting was great and only a few actors were noticeably bad.
Now I know what most people are wondering about is the action and violence in the movie. I can say that it is a great action oriented movie and has plenty of great fighting scene. The first half of the movie to me is the better half when it came to the fighting scenes. It was thrilling to see them flying through the air kicking each others asses. The problem I had with the second half though, was the amount of CGI they used and I'm not saying CGI is a bad thing either. It just felt that they used to much of it towards the end and it seemed different from the first half.
Most people are probably expecting a gore fest of a movie sense Quentin Tarantino has his name on it. Which is definitely a bad thing in my opinion. But, after watching it I did not feel that it had as much as I was expecting. Don't get me wrong though, it is still a violent movie and there is scenes where it gets particularly gory. There is plenty of blood to enjoy and I think they did a great job.
I got a lot of joy out this film and that is good for being Rza's first main stream movie. The overall main plot was unfortunately not that good of an experience for me and they did kind of veer off into another direction then I wanted it to when it came to the ending segment. These things did effect my personal opinion for the movie but, it definitely was not bad. I do recommend this film for at least a one time watch and maybe even a second if your friends have not seen it. I give it a 7.5 out of 10 and remember this whole review was opinion based so, don't yell at me! Hope this helped out a little and I hope you enjoy!
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