Martial Arts films are always memorable if done right, and Iron Monkey is a great Martial Art film that delivers on story and fantastic choreography.Ī doctor fights the corrupt authorities as a masked Robin Hood hero, even while another martial artist/doctor is forced to hunt for him. It's a formula that's won time and time again. You get the guards who are the easiest to fend off, the henchman who are a bit more difficult to defeat, and finally the big boss man who poses the biggest threat. You get a solid, yet incredibly simple, story of a man working/stealing for/helping the people to take from the rich and corrupt for the poor. While a film like this won't necessarily have the structure or seriousness of other foreign action flicks, the campiness of a Robin Hood man of the people in Chinese mythology is never over due. The hand-to-hand combat is close and tight and at times dizzying, but you can tell when the editing was sped up to make it seem faster than it really was. The high-flying action and balancing acts are really more for spectacle than anything else. Quick hands and quick feet accompany him with a multitude of fighting styles to make you giddy over the mythical action sequences more atone to a Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon than, say, a Rumble in the Bronx. Iron Monkey delivers all the mixed-martial arts you would expect from a Donnie Yen masterpiece. That's a good way to negate this entire review. There's a terrible Gene Shalit-esque pun for you. I wouldn't call this a kung-fu classic, but I would still greatly recommend it if you love this kind of film. There's also a lot of comedy here and plenty of funny lines, particularly the one about the virgin that got a hearty laugh out of me. A lot of people might be turned off by the silliness of it all, but I thought the action itself was, obviously, the highlight. I did find the climactic battle between the Royal Minister and the Iron Monkeys atop the wooden poles really cool conceptually and in execution. Yes, there's a lot of wire-work and a lot of defying the natural laws of physics and gravity, but that's part of what makes these films as unique as they are. The action in this film is really damn good honestly. I haven't seen Crouching in a long time, so it wouldn't be fair to say which is better and which is not. That would be a 'correct' statement but misleading the fact that it implies the former is better than the latter. That's like me saying that Pitch Perfect is more fun than Oldboy. And not that Crouching wasn't meant to entertain, clearly the action being the way it was in that film was intended for it to wow audiences, but thematically it was completely different. This is more a simple story designed to entertain whereas Crouching Tiger is more like watching poetry in motion, as much of a cliche as that is. And not that Crouching Tiger is a self-serious film to the point of mockery, but it is a film with a more serious story. Iron Monkey is not meant to be taken as seriously as Crouching Tiger. While they would certainly be in the same martial arts/kung-fu section of your local video store, they are two vastly different movies thematically and tonally. And that, to me, is a really stupid thing to do. There's a blurb on the poster here that says that this film is more fun than Crouching Tiger. Don't get me wrong, the film prior to this is still really fucking good and entertaining, but I think there's a level of insanity to the climax itself that cannot be denied.
It sucks for this woman, but I just found this entire exchange to be tremendous. One of the Iron Monkeys, unsure of which one, kicks the woman back at him. The minister throws the woman at them like a spear. There was also this scene, prior to the woman taking the stars to the chest, once the Iron Monkeys appear. I found this absolutely fucking hilarious. The minister, being annoyed at this, literally kicks this woman high into the air, off camera, never to be seen again. The woman who took the stars to the chest is now begging for help at the Minister's feet, grabbing on to his legs.
The minister stands up to face both Wong and the doctor, both pretending to be Iron Monkey for this last scene. There's this hilarious scene near the climax where a woman, who the Minister used to shield himself from ninja stars, or something close to that, that were thrown by the Iron Monkey. Particularly once the Royal Minister appears, when the film becomes a ridiculously over-the-top kung fu film.
The streak of bad-to-average movies that lasted close to three weeks finally ends! I may be over-rating this film slightly, but I had an absolute blast watching this movie.
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