By Joshua Tyler | Published
In the early 2000s, the American action film began to drown slowly in a sea of Asian thread copycats. It was not pretty, and it left action icons from the 90s like Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Van Damme wearing cement galoshes at the bottom of a Kung Fu sea.
The flying ninjas and the floating masters of karate were replaced by detectives from the booming Bronx and scientists in slow motion. Above all, it was laughable. In the precipitation of Hollywood to imitate the success of The matrixThe choreography of Asia brand Asian waterfalls for a while has become more a joke than a form of art.
Who changed when John Wick Fleece on the stage in 2014, but until no one seemed to know how to do things regularly correctly. One of the rare light points of this pre-John Wick The era was Iron Monkey, Asian import from 1993 reissued in America in 2001 to show these Hollywood copies how to do things well.
Iron monkey is the story of a Chinese vigilante from the 19th century (Rongguang Yu), fighting with his own style of Shaolin Kung Fu for the rights of the oppressed and the belly of the hungry. It is also a piece of the story of the legendary Chinese film hero Wong Fei-Hong.
Wong Fei-Hong is a character name, you will know if you saw the best action film by Jackie Chan, Master drunk 2. Contrary to Master drunk 2who features Jackie Chan as an adult fei-Hong, Iron monkey Find a much younger Fei-Hong (Sze-Man Tsang) and his father Wong Kei-Ying (Donnie Yen) plunged in the middle of Iron Monkey’s fight against oppression.
Iron monkey was led by Yuen Woo-Ping, the legendary figure that would later become The matrix Fight the choreographer. He Co-Stars Donnie Yen, who continued to work with Yuen Woo-Ping behind the scenes The matrixand who plays later in John Wick: Chapter 4 Opposite Keanu Reeves.
Unlike other Kung Fu movies released in the wake of The matrixIron Monkey was not a copy. It was the film that inspired The matrix First.
Iron monkey succeeds in a way of pure kung-fu films, in addition Master drunk 2to have. While sometimes the combat styles, especially that of Monkey himself, turn into the floating ridicule at the end of the school of films like Tiger crouching, hidden dragonDirector Yuen Wo Ping finally remembers bringing his action scenes back to earth.
Iron monkey is in his heart an action film Hardcore and Kung-Fu rather than any type of drama. However, there are brief moments of depth shared between characters, such as those who pass between our hero out of law and his enemy with good hearts but badly, the leader Fox.
In these moments, and in others, Iron monkey manages to transcend his nature of Kung fu insane to touch the heart and mind of his audience. In no case the equal of a masterpiece as Master drunk 2,, Iron monkey Dance very well at the best type of kung fu melody.
