“A windstorm of flying elephant shit.”
The H-Bomb: Picking up shortly after the original The Man with the Iron Fists ended, this sequel chronicles the further exploits of the Blacksmith, aka the man with the iron fists, aka Thaddeus (RZA), as he travels through 19th century China in search of his “Qi,” (pronounced chee) and with it, inner peace… or something. Along the way, he’s ambushed by the remaining members of the clan he fought in the last movie, who severely injure him and send him floating unconscious down a river.
The Blacksmith eventually washes up near a village, and is discovered by a teenage girl named Innocence (I shit you not), who takes him back to her home to nurse him back to health. So, the movie pretty much sets Thaddeus aside for the time being, in favor of focusing on this troubled village he has washed up onto. Young girls have been turning up murdered, their souls apparently being sucked out of them… Christ, I feel my IQ dropping as I type this.
The villagers believe that an ancient ghost of some Kung Fu something-or-other is responsible for their deaths, and have turned to the powerful Beetle Clan, led by Master Ho (Carl Ng), a rather unpleasant fellow, who sports a nasty neck scar and brags about how a prostitute once chewed one of his testicles off… don’t ask. Ho has promised to protect the village and find the lady killer, in exchange for the villagers working tirelessly in a nearby mine for him.
Well, after a long time of being brutally mistreated, and the lady killer not being found, the villagers, led by quiet bad-ass Li Kung (Dustin Nguyen), come to realize that their arrangement with Master Ho is kind of a shit deal. From this realization, a resistance gradually (make that very gradually) starts to form against Ho and his Dung Beetle gang. A resistance that our man with the iron fists will eventually join… as soon as he wakes up.
2012’s The Man with the Iron Fists was a considerable disappointment for me. It starred, and was directed by, RZA, a lifelong martial arts movie buff, was co-written by Eli Roth (Hostel, Cabin Fever), co-starred Russell fucking Crowe, and was “Presented by” the man himself, Quentin Tarantino. It was a Shaw Brothers throwback flick that looked like it had “Fuckin’ Awesome” written all over it.
And for the first half-hour or so, it was indeed fuckin’ awesome… then the rest of the movie happened, in which it basically turned into Sucker Punch. That’s to say, it became incoherent, repetitive, and despite all the highly-stylized action, was just really, really dull. This is mainly due to the fact that it was a four hour movie cut down to ninety minutes. Add to that, the RZA’s acting chops made Van Damme look like Daniel Day-Lewis, and what we were left with was a jumbled, garbled mess of a movie, with a horrendous lead performance, that ultimately just sucked.
Why then, would they make a sequel? I have no idea. I didn’t even know a sequel was in the works until it showed up on Netflix a week or two ago. So, here we are, The Man with the Iron Fists 2: Sting of the Scorpion, a follow-up that the whole world has been clamoring for. Fuck The Avengers: Age of Asswipe, this is where it’s at, kids. Once again, RZA co-writes, co-stars, and composes the soundtrack, an assortment of hip-hop tracks. Logic would dictate this soundtrack is entirely inappropriate for this film, yet, oddly enough, it’s one of the better things about it.
RZA also made a smart move by not returning to the director’s chair. This time, the directing duties go to Roel Reine, the visionary auteur behind such enduring classics as The Marine 2, Death Race 2 & 3, and The Scorpion King 3. Noticing a pattern, here? Anyhow, his direction is competent, though it lacks the stylish flourishes of the original. The budget is noticeably lower, this go around, thus explaining the absence of Russell Crowe… or any other noteworthy actor. The fight scenes, what few of them there are, are shot and cut in a way that I can actually see what’s going on, which is kind of a rarity these days.
Here endeth the praise…
The fight choreography is incredibly clunky, with folks flailing and flipping over each other in a way that isn’t even remotely exciting. The big battle at the end, that sends people flying through the air, Crouching Tiger-style, makes for a spectacularly limp finale, which brings me to the greatest short coming of Iron Fists 2, it is goddamn boring. Thankfully, this is a film that was written to be ninety minutes, as opposed to one that was written to be four hours and then was cut down to ninety minutes, so at least we get a coherent narrative this time, but holy hell it just is not interesting. At all.
By the end, I didn’t give a shit about these villagers or their plight. Half the time, I was wondering where the fuck Thaddeus the Blacksmith was, as he is the title character, yet spends the bulk of the movie in a fucking coma. Even when he does bother to show up for the not-so-grand finale, he’s given jack-dick to do aside from punching an odd thug here and there. This is a case where the hero is completely extraneous to the story, and given RZA’s acting abilities, which have not improved since the first film in the slightest, I’d say his absence from the bulk of the plot probably works in the film’s favor.
The real hero here is Nguyen, who’s actually quite good as Li Kung, an everyman who resorts to violence only after his hand is forced and his loved ones are harmed. He does the quiet, intense thing pretty well, and easily gives the best performance of the film. Sadly, his performance is the only good one. Ng as Ho, villainous leader of the Dung Beetle Brigade, tries to play it larger-than-life, but totally lacks the presence and gusto to do so, and simply comes off as a horrible ham. That distracting neck scar of his, that seems to change size and shape every time we see it, doesn’t do him any favors, either.
All things considered, I’d say The Man with the Iron Fists 2: Sting of the Scorpion (the relevance of that subtitle, I haven’t a clue) is every bit as shitty as its predecessor. With its flaccid fight scenes, lackluster plot, sluggish pacing, and the RZA doing his best impersonation of a fucking totem pole, it absolutely does not work as a B-movie homage, and isn’t even worthy of a Netflix stream. Fans of chop-socky martial arts flicks can do much, much better than this wannabe Kill Bill bullshit.
