‘the Man With the Iron Fists” is an exact replica of 1970s kung-fu pictures, right down to the jerky stunts, wooden dialogue and overenthusiastic music. Congratulations, I guess, but I think if Per Se really wanted to serve Salisbury steak from a frozen Swanson TV dinner, it could. Why would it?
Wu-Tang Clan rapper RZA directs, co-writes (with Eli Roth of “Hostel”) and stars in this martial-arts saga set in olden days China. After the assassination of local kingpin Gold Lion, the old man’s son Zen Yi (Rick Yune) seeks revenge against the treacherous usurpers Silver Lion and Bronze Lion (Byron Mann, Cung Le), with many limbs to be lopped off in the process.
Also interested in vengeance is an escaped American slave and blacksmith (RZA) who, after getting both arms cut off, remakes himself Iron Man-style with help from a mysterious British soldier (Russell Crowe) who enjoys disemboweling anyone who starts an argument with him. For the ladies, there’s a lethal madam (Lucy Liu) who goes all “Kill Bill” on the bad guys and the blacksmith’s hooker girlfriend (Jamie Chung). She tries to take out the villainous Brass Body (Dave Bautista), who is impervious to the many whirling blades and crossbow arrows flying through the film, and does a lot of growling and flexing.
Heads depart shoulders, arteries spurt, and the actors speak in the affectless way of amateurs who are reading through lines they have just been handed, in order to sound just like the hacks who dubbed in the voices on the Hong Kong flicks back in the ’70s. You can sense Quentin Tarantino, who “presents” this movie (whatever that means), getting really excited about all the chop-socky action and corny dialogue, but Tarantino’s genuine appreciation for bad 1970s movies is something I am unable to fathom. Have you ever tried to sit through the original “The Inglorious Bastards”? It makes “The A-Team” look like Shakespeare.
We’ve seen this kind of spoof before, in the fake trailers inserted into “Grindhouse,” which proved that a dead-on parody of an exploitation movie can be hilarious in a brief blast. “Machete,” a feature-length spinoff of one of those trailers, added ironic wit, but “Iron Fists” plods along without any such tweaks. At 96 minutes it is exactly 93 1/2 minutes too long. If they’re going to put this artifact in theaters, they’d better charge 1973 grindhouse prices: a dollar a ticket.