The Man with the Iron Fists 2 (2015) Reviews

• The iron has accumulated rust

  quincytheodore2015-04-14

  RZA is definitely passionate about martial art movie and he invests a lot of time for this niche, but The Man with the Iron Fists 2 is a subpar action movie. It has low production value, the exotic location surprisingly isn't appealing, the script is flimsy and most importantly the action choreography is utterly disappointing. Fights are no better than scenes from ancient action flick from decades ago, and with this flaw the movie just loses its main appeal. Story goes that there's an entity on a mining town that feeds on life force. The people of this town also have to content with oppression from the ruling clan. Meanwhile Thaddeus (RZA) is unexpectedly involved in a rebellion against the dictator. Main focus of the movie is the struggle of town folks, there's barely any continuity from the first movie and RZA himself only here as a supporting role. The plot tries to resolves its several subplots, only to be hampered with poor execution. Writing and characterization are not satisfying, it follows the usual rebellion theme with screeching pace. Though it has a couple of twists, the direction is so slow, one can skip thirty minutes of the movie and doesn't miss much. The build-up is inconsistent with shady acting, and change of setting to beach town doesn't prove to be amusing as well. Environment only consists of a dark barren town and a rural village. The use of color contrast feels archaic, it's nothing more than the visual of B-movie. Furthermore, the soundtracks don't fit the theme, it may be intended as clash of cultures, but the end result is borderline intrusive. While the first movie wasn't that great, it still had production value with famous names and stylish design. This one definitely has less budget as everything looks lackluster. Whereas the screenplay is abysmal, the action might fare worse. The motion seems fake even though it uses slow mo to mask it, some scenes even depict missed punches and overacting but these are still edited clumsily for the final product. It looks awkward for an action film not being able to deliver action sequences. While it may benefit from oriental ambiance, the cumbersome plot and underwhelming choreography sink the movie like two giant anchors strapped on its limbs.

• Keep your expectations very low...

  Deathracer2015-04-12

  The positives in this movie would be the story, which is quite decent. And apart from Tagawa I was only impressed with Carl Ng's performance that made the story watchable till the end. With all the great, good looking Chinese actors and actresses we see, I must say this was the weirdest cast I have come across.I expected more of RZA but way past the halfway mark of the movie I realized he may not be playing the main role. RZA, who I would say really did good in "Brick Mansions" was terrible, flapping his "rubber" Iron Fists. As I mentioned Carl Ng does a pretty decent job in the beginning building up his character to be a real bad-ass, although it leads to big disappointment as the story progresses with very bad fighting scenes. A good fight would be one key factor we expect from this movie that lacks, apart from number of other elements like poor acting, poor selection of cast.

• Overall opinion of the movie.

  christianfheins2015-04-19

  Really bad movie, the first version of "the Man with the iron fists" is interesting; photo, music, plot, cast. But this second version is bad from start to end; aerial shots are really poor (drone shakes once in a while as well as the color quality), acting of the secondary characters is poor as well, not even overacted is just bad acting (90% of the cast is secondary or not decently known actors). The plot, visual effects, make up and fight choreography is also poor. After 10 min is really hard to keep on watching, you really have to try hard to kind of enjoy it. The music is kind of OK, but not compared to the first movie, which in my opinion was the most interesting part of a Kungfu kind of movie with the RZA music taste. Unfortunately a really, but really bad sequel. If you like B type of movies, like the 80's delta force or American ninja, you might like this one, I say might.

• An epic waste of time

  eaf-uddin2016-04-03

  What an epic waste of time and money. Far more worse than the previous one. Poor story line, screenplay, casting. The title is inappropriate also as RZA is playing a side role. Action scenes are not up to par.A complete rubbish. Only good thing is the story. It has some twist . But one can predict that easily. The castings are not good as the previous one. Without Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu and Batista this sequel don't stand a chance . The music is not appropriate with the scenes. And too much unnecessary violence. Personally, i watched it because i kind of like the first one. But the story lack continuity. It will go down as one of the worst movie in recent years.

• Total waste of time and money! 2/10

  leonblackwood2015-06-06

  Review: What a complete waste of time! I thought that RZA would have learnt from the first movie but this one is even worse. Without Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu, this sequel really didn't have a chance, especially with its terrible storyline and weak characters. Basically it's about a evil man who runs the village and forces the men to work in a mine. The miners group together to try and take out the vicious evil-doer but they always end up getting murdered, until Thaddeus comes along. After getting saved by one of the miners daughters, Thaddeus makes them weapons to take out Master Ho and the leader of the miners, Li Kung, challenges him to a duel. With the help of his fellow miners and Thaddeus, they battle to take down his clan with there martial arts skills and weapons. The storyline is really bad and the heavy hip hop beats throughout the movie didn't match the mood of the film. The acting is pretty poor but it does look authentic and some of the scenery was impressive. Personally, I don't know how RZA was able to release another one of these movies because the first one was a joke. He seemed really out of place throughout the film and his fighting skills were terrible and hard to watch. Anyway, I personally think that this was a total waste of time and money and I'm not surprised that it went straight to DVD. Terrible! Round-Up: Although the music throughout the movie didn't suit the scenes, I was bopping my head to RZA's beats so he should really stick to what he's good at. The whole iron fist concept really didn't play a big part in this movie and RZA seemed to be missing most of the time. On the plus side, the film didn't look low budget and some of the gory fighting scenes were OK but RZA really needs to do something with Thaddeus, who just seems to be in a bad mood all of the time. If he's going to come out with another movie in this franchise, he's need to do the Iron Fists in America because the Oriental flavour really isn't working.  I recommend this movie to people who are into their martial movies about a group of miners who want to take down there evil boss with the help of Thaddeus. 2/10