Keanu Reeves’ directorial debut concerns a pure-hearted practitioner of tai chi, Tiger (Tiger Hu Chen), who is drawn into a world of underground fighting. Reeves has cast himself as Donaka, a psychopathic businessman with a decided fondness for rhetorical questions. To give these the proper emphasis, Reeves drops his voice to a hoarse drone and tenses his face into a fixed stare, like a man reading Confucius off a teleprompter: “Does it matter? Is that what you fight for?”
Tiger is fighting to save his tai chi master’s temple from a developer — and fighting, and fighting. The film is one grunting, whirling martial-arts matchup after another, the opponents popping up like so many video game levels. An episode of “The Ultimate Fighter” has more variation and better lines, too. Aside from the fights, this is mostly Reeves in a bunch of castoff business suits from “The Matrix” pacing around his black-leather-and-steel lair. (Attention, art directors: Must villains always hang out in S&M dungeons? Why does no one want to explore the sinister potential of chintz?)
The enjoyable element is Karen Mok, playing a cop, lips pressed in a thin line, looking as though she’d like to knock everyone’s heads together and force them to get on with it — though perhaps that’s projecting.