The Man with the Iron Fists 2

I'm only writing this review because some of the other reviews are far too harsh. Yes, this is a bad movie, but it's not any worse than most other low budget chop socky I've watched, if anything it suffers from a lack of fighting. My biggest complaint would be that the asians in this flick all speak english to well and detracts from that asian market grindhouse martial arts feel. Anyway if you've watched more than five none hollywood kung fu movies you'll see it's Ok.

Here you can learn, how a movie can start and actually also end as an real epic movie - with elements from one of the oldest and proudest cultures on earth and perhaps the greatest and oldest philosophy our human civilization has developed on earth, and get transformed to an B-grade movie, in no time. Lot of crap effects with red fluid in slow motion and meaningless violence. Nothing really fits in this movie - from HipHop to music from a old Western: 'the good the bad and the ugly'... A black American actor as black American blacksmith...? If the story were great, we will probably not care about the detail so much. But a weak story, the viewer begins to wonder about all the mixed up elements from different genres.

Landscape from Thailand (with even elephants...?) - no Chinese language language at all and the play and fighting scenes are performed poorly, more like in a school theater - all of this is staffed inside a Chinese Martial-Art movie. With all this elements, incongruent set together, it seems like a awful wast of money - producing and to buying the movie.

There are beautiful scenes of Thailand... There are very deep spiritual thoughts in very small glimpses, but used like parsley on a inedible mush. Then back to the rather mechanical fight scenes. I could nearly hear the director on set: "People will see action, people will have distraction from their own miserable life, so don't bother with the story or anything else, just show some action". Underestimating the viewer and at the same time a perfect recipe to produce a B-grate Movie!

• Shooting a typical french movie in the Netherlands, with all the tulips and Windmills i the background, will probably be for some people in US not disturbing - it's all together in Europe anyway and doesn't matter for them. Or... Asia is Asia... Thailand, China... whatever... For us who are, or have been in China and Thailand many times - there are enormous difference in nature and building-styles and a totally different experience to be in this two different countries. I have never been a fan of Western movies - made in Italy in the 1970s - either. I had also he kind of experience like "something is not right and steals the focus"e already 40 years ago. Perhaps you will not buy this movie and see it instead on one of the millions of super commercial TV stations - with 5 minutes movie and 15 minutes commercials. With a good mix of toothpaste, call your plumbing specialist, hairstyling, Real Estate and Carwash - you will enjoy the 5 minutes movie, in between the commercials and don't realize any in-congruency anyway. It is still to us humans one of the finest Art to make a great movie, where there are being taking care of all the details and everything fits together. Then the whole world will stand up and applaud excited.

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.

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.

If you're OK with watching B-grade type movies with weird plot holes and fight scenes where you can often spot a completely missed hit, then this movie is OK.

But if you're expecting a great Kung-Fu thriller, this isn't it.

There are a lot of roll-your-eyes moments, where you could see it coming a mile away and the cheese factor is high. The script seems to have been written by the black dude starring in it, at least it feels that way.

It's about as good/bad as the first movie.

Then there's the cheesy soundtrack. It's crap. It reminds me of Kanye's stuff. It's crap too. (I just looked up the sound track and he is actually on it, so now it makes sense).

I did have fun watching it though, it's not awful if you can get past the obvious stuff and I think overall it deserves the rating it has right now.

5/10