Saturday, January 4, 2025

The Man with the Iron Fists 2 (2015)

  This has nowhere near the level of quality as the first one but that did not bother me in the slightest.  It is a big, dumb, poorly written martial arts extravaganza in the style of the Shaw Brothers and I enjoyed it.  

On a quest to find inner peace, Thaddeus (RZA), the man with the iron fists, stumbles into a small mining village run by an evil gang called Clan Beetle.  The mayor (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) is ineffectual and the local union leader (Dustin Nguyen) is trying to avoid a violent showdown so he doesn't have to confront his own past.  Oh, and the ghost of some evil dude looking for immortality is killing young women, but nobody super cares about that until it's too late.

Yes, this does feel like an extended episode of Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.  This is a feature, not a bug, but your mileage may vary.  Some people's comfort media is romantic comedy, mine is martial arts.  Tropes abound, including classics like Lone Hero Reluctantly Takes Up Arms Again for Worthy Cause, Average Guy Hides Previous Occupation as Sociopathic Badass, Honor Challenges in the Octagon, Beautiful Highly Useless Girl with Astonishingly Stupid Name Gets Kidnapped/Held Hostage, and (a personal favorite) Ancient Monk Drops a Beatdown on Fools While Espousing Non-Violence.  That is my emotional support Wire Fu, please leave it alone.

Sadly, this did not get any kind of support or cult following so it's much harder to find.  You're going to have to dust off the VPN or shell out some money to rent it.  This was obviously a labor of love for RZA, and frankly, more millionaires should have silly creative outlets like this.

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