Theater Whore: The Man With The Iron Fists

The entry for the premise of The Man With The Iron Fists says “On the hunt for a fabled treasure of gold, a band of warriors, assassins, and a rogue British soldier descend upon a village in feudal China, where a humble blacksmith looks to defend himself and his fellow villagers.” This is a super lie. This is the tale of a man that wanted to see a movie about a man with iron fists and ended up watching a jumbled batch of nonsense about a guy that not only watches but helps a lot of terrible shit happen.

RZA wrote, directed, and starred in this movie. He shouldn’t have done any of these things. He’s a blacksmith in a small Chinese village where these multiple clans are fighting for gold and control. He makes weapons for both sides meanwhile he just wants to save enough money so he and his hooker girlfriend can move away and fuck in the forest in peace. It made me wonder “Is there such a place where you can be left alone?” I don’t think so. Just when you think you’re safe some asshole will jump out of a tree wearing wolf claws that were probably made by you.

Russell Crowe shows up all fat looking to bang some whores at Lucy Liu’s whorehouse and just starts picking chicks. He sees one with this fat dude and ends up gutting him with his gun/knife. This, of course, turns women on. Oh, you didn’t know? (I swear if you’re a woman and read that last line in Road Dogg’s voice or even know who that is chances are I’ll let you sit on my face). He says he is there to rest and spends most of his time fucking.

"I feel like chicken tonight! Like chicken tonight!"

There are these clans that are fighting and one dude who had his father killed and is looking for the guys who did it and kill them in the bloodiest way possible. He has a suit that is made of knives. Like, he bends his wrists and knives jump out. He taps his foot and knives come out. He yawns and knives come out. He goes to hug his wife and knives come out. You get the idea. He ends up fighting this dude called Brass Body who is played by David Bautista. Why is he called that? Because you hit him and he turns to brass.

"Me want Honeycomb!!!"

All the furry men that are evil keep on killing people and they end up in a place with this couple called the Gemini. They fight. Why? Because the Gemini don’t want to work with them. it’s a cool looking fight but goes way too long and gets more and more ridiculous. Some people seem surprised by guns and others are like “Yeah, it’s a fucking gun. Some of us use them.” The Gemini kill a shit ton of guys but lose because of goddamn blow darts. There’s no real reason to even bring these people up. I just wanted to use this picture.

Distracted by granny pannies. Shot in face. 

Eventually the bad guys get to the blacksmith and tell him to say where the knife suit guy is who got fucked up by Brass Body is. He doesn’t because fuck personal safety and they chop his arms off. Russell Crowe shows up and saves him. Then you get this slapped together history of the blacksmith where he was a slave who accidentally killed a guy while leaving, made it to a Buddhist temple, learned all kinds of chi involved shit, and ended up fucking a whore in China. He sticks his arms into the hot iron fists and becomes the title of the movie. What. The. Fuck.

Sch-slicesliceslice!

The bad guys end up at the whore house and they all start fucking the hookers which is fine because Lucy Liu invited them to. Then the hookers start killing the bad guys. The blacksmith’s woman was with Brass Body and pricks him but then that just angers his blood and he tosses her around like a spank rag until she dies in the blacksmith’s arms. Now he’s mad. Thing is, if he and his crew didn’t spend twenty minutes posing and admiring their own weapons he totally could’ve saved her.

Hookers were literally falling from the sky.

The blacksmith and Brass Body finally fight. it’s the battle we’ve been waiting this entire film to see! Right? RIGHT?! No, not really. Brass Body whips his ass until he starts channeling his kung fu chi and the poison from earlier conveniently kicks in and Brass Body gets killed. The army shows up and Russell Crowe is like “Don’t shoot! We have saved the day. Oh, and here’s about forty little kids with me! Yeah. I don’t know why either. Maybe they’re whores in training. Either way all is well!” And that’s it. Except for the fact that a lot of people are dead including the hero’s woman and he doesn’t have real arms anymore. But yay gold!

You can still get a fade haircut back then. In China. Yeah.

Fuck this movie. The stuff that I assume was supposed to be cool wasn’t and the cheesy stuff was the bad kind of cheese. How do you fuck up this kind of premise? By having it originally be four hours and get chopped to 86 minutes. I swear I would’ve hung myself if this was even two hours long. It seemed like a bunch of different films were made and they stitched them together to make this. The last fight uses these comic book framed shots to hide the fact that RZA is really bad at kung fu. And having the first song in the film start off with “Shame on a ni**a!” in a room full of Asians? Seriously?