Why oh why did I shop at Mediaplay? Why oh why did I buy a Donnie Yen-directed DVD for $24? I didn't think a plain Rushmore DVD (my favorite movie) was worth $20 yet I bought this special featureless DVD for four more bucks. Not only was it special-featureless, it was also plotless, funless, medium-shot in fight scene less, and ultimately pointless.

This movie has Donnie Yen in a Bruce Lee kinda role where he's a martial artist who helps the weak and keeps on getting crap from people until he can't take it any more (neither can we) so he busts out his martial arts. Sounds cool, yeah, so does Gladiator.
Let's not kid ourselves, Donnie is an actor who lacks conventional charms and good looks--I doubt if he even has "non-conventional" charms and good-looks. But in this movie he spends so much time making himself looking as good as possible with his slo-moed stances and sped-up fight sequences. That's like using computers to remove the shadows of Cher's nose--she's still ugly.

But enough, I mean, Iron Monkey is good despite its sped-up choreography and Donnie Yen. Donnie can kick, he can do tai-chi, he can do weapons, he's capable of both wushu and more contemporary kickboxing choreography, then why oh why must he Good Will Hunting it away? In the movie he seems to be content with his sped-up supertight fight scenes (so you can't tell what the hell is going on) and lame lame tasteless storylines that can only shock audiences by killing off all important characters. Oh my god, she's dead! What a twist! It's not a twist. It's twisted. And tasteless.

Okay back to the fight scene, what makes directors nowadays think that in order to make a good movie, one (the filmmaker, not the martial artist) must cut a lot and zoom in a lot? To quote Jarett's review of Shanghai Noon, the cynical critic from www.dumbassandthefag.com, we're basically "watching a martial arts movie filtered through a car commerical." Each fight is no longer than 3 minutes long and most of the time you just the hands flailing with the sound guy clearly in love with his new synthesized drumset that goes "pah pah pah pah pah pah pah" it's more fun picturing what could've happened than to watch the movie--and that's not very fun to begin with.

There are decent actors in this movie, namely Yu RongGuang, but hey guess who is wasted? Any answer is probably right since everyone is wasted in this movie. And wasted here encompasses multiple meanings. It can mean wasted= underused (the great martial artists), wasted=beat up (the stuntguys whose axes are no matches for Donnie Yen's improvised-weapon of choice--broken twigs) or wasted=inebriated (the camera guy, and <gasp!> Donnie Yen.)

So yes, I strongly urge you to not watch this movie, unless you like crap.

God I've just heard about Donnie Yen's big ego and I can so totally picture myself getting my ass kicked by that guy for this review. Go to sleep now Donnie. It's all just a bad dream. (That's what I kept telling myself when I was watching this movie, except I didn't call myself Donnie, I went by my real name instead--"The Poor Bastard Who Got Ripped by Mediaplay AND Donnie Yen All in the Same Day".)