REVIEW - THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS

RZA's The Man with the Iron Fists is several films in one. It is his many influences, from across the spectrum of both cinema and culture as a whole, clashing gracelessly to form an amateurish, disconnected film that skims over its action, half-heartedly flaunts its tacky aesthetic and revels only in its gimmicky ideas, which are in abundance. Gaudy, wobbly shit. But, in its individual moments and at its shameless, artless best, it is most enjoyable shit. As is par for the course with films like this, there is a near-incomprehensible plot that serves only as a vessel for frantic action sequences; RZA's influences, though, reach to DTV kung fu B-movies and the like, so these action sequences are generally uninspired, forgettable and unrewarding. So too is the script, which aims for camp and cutting but never quite achieves either, and the visual design, which had such capacity for brilliance and beauty, in the vein of so many recent martial arts movies, but which looks plain and cheap. I suppose this is all the point. RZA's intentions did not stretch to elevating his source material, which, to him, was fine left rough around the edges (and most everywhere else, to be fair), corny and full of anachronism, continuity errors, and offensively bad dialogue. I would wonder, then, why he didn't choose to save Universal a box office humiliation, and release The Man with the Iron Fists on DVD, where it undoubtedly belongs. It's the sort of film probably best enjoyed inebriated, in the company of friends, and with only minimal attention paid. A silly film, coarse and unfunny, and I can't work out whether it is better for the fact that it is intentionally bad, or worse. One thing that I can work out was good, though: the Tina Turner wigs.