The promos may well proclaim Quentin Tarantino Presents The Man With the Iron Fists, and I’m sure Tarantino’s name has helped raise awareness in the project and will bring more than a few people to the ticket office, but without a doubt the film is very much the brainchild of the Wu Tang Clan’s RZA.
A lifelong fan of Kung Fu cinema who makes his official directorial debut with the project, the film is set for release in November, so Forces of Geek’s Man from Hong Kong and Man With The Iron Fists casting director Big Mike Leeder gives us a sneak peek.
The film was developed from RZA’s original ideas over several years, with RZA and Eli Roth (who also serves as a producer on the film) developing an epic tale of heroes and villains, warriors and kings, good and bad assassins, monks & martial artistry and much more all coming together in what RZA has hinted will be the first in a series of movies set in his take on the Wu Xia world of Kung Fu Cinema.
According to a recent interview with Vanity Fair, when asked where the first ideas for the film came from;
To be truthful with you, this idea probably came to me when I was kid walking to school on Staten Island. A lot of mornings I didn’t have a nickel to take the bus so I had to walk. When I walked, I would fantasize about movies. When I was eight or nine years old, my older cousin took me to the St. George Theatre on Staten Island to see a Bruce Lee movie and a Jim Kelly movie. Those were my first martial-arts films, and I fell in love with the genre back then. As I started becoming a Kung-Fu geek, I would start walking to 42nd Street to see these movies. I would cut school for them. But when I would go to school, I would dream about movies. This started in the mind of a young kid who was stuck in ghetto poverty and used this movie as escapism.
Since arriving in China’s Jungle Village, and taking the job of the town’s blacksmith (RZA) has been forced by radical tribal factions to create elaborate tools of destruction. When the warring clans begin raging war, the stranger channels an ancient energy to transform himself into a human weapon.
As he fights alongside iconic heroes and against soulless villains, one man must harness this power to fight for justice.
RZA has assembled a very impressive cast from both East & West, established names and exciting newcomers all of whom bring some unique qualities to the film.
Headlining the cast is none other than Russell Crowe, who plays the mysterious Jack Knife, regarded as the deadliest man in the world.
He seems like RZA’s take on the Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name, an opium addicted soldier of fortune named after his signature weapon of choice. But is he a hero or villain, fighting for the good, the bad, or just for himself?
We’ll find out in November when the film is unleashed upon the world.
Crowe’s involvement in the film came about through his friendship with RZA that was established when they worked together on American Gangster and The Next Three Days. RZA admits that Crowe liked the idea but took a while to be persuaded to join the film.
Lucy Liu plays Madame Blossom, the original Dragon Lady, who runs a brothel in the village servicing the needs and desires of the men they encounter, but from the looks of things has her own hidden agenda and her girls are as deadly as they are beautiful!
Power belongs to no one, until it
Korean American actor Rick Yune from Fast & Furious and Die Another Day gets to play the mysterious X-Blade, a warrior drawn into the action when his family is betrayed.
Yune has previously let rip with his martial arts skills to good effect in Ninja Assassin and Jesse V. Johnson’s The Fifth Commandment. When asked about his character in a recent interview, Yune said;
My character is the son of a warlord that’s away in the mountain’s romancing his future wife. While away from his village he finds that his father has been assassinated so he leaves his woman and goes home to investigate the death of his father and avenge the murder. The fact that the character is not all right and wrong is what attracted me to the part.
Byron Mann, whose credits include everything from Crying Freeman, Street Fighter with Jean-Claude Van Damme, The Corrupter with Chow Yun-Fat and soon to be seen in Arrow, playing the mentor to the title character. plays the memorable Silver Lion, a man manipulating the clans for his own nefarious needs. Silver Lion’s loyalty is matched only by his treachery, and as seen in the trailer, a man amused by the suffering that he brings to others.
K1 and Strikeforce Champion Cung Le racks up another solid credit playing the pugilistic warrior known as Bronze Lion.
Cung has already racked a range of credits in East & West including True Legend, Bodyguards & Assassins, Pandorum, Tekken and Dragon Eyes opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme. He’ll soon be seen in Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster (which is scheduled for a December 2012 release even though additional shooting was only completed a few weeks ago (The film has had one of the lengthiest production schedules in Hong Kong history, shooting for several years with Cung’s Iron Fists involvement being scheduled around his initial work on the project). Cung will also fight Rich Franklin in the UFC in Macau on November 10th, in what many believe will be his final fight.
While former WWE champion Dave Bautista who has already racked up credits including The Scorpion King 3 and Chuck, plays the man mountain that is Brass Body, a phenomenally strong fighter who can be seen in the trailer to have the power to transform his body.
Bautista has described the character as;
A good guy who made a lot of bad choices in his life. he doesn’t really understand the difference between right and wrong.
The lovely Jamie Chung last seen in Premium Rush, plays Lady Silk, a courtesan who has captured the heart of the Blacksmith. Although we’d love to see Chung kicking ass ala Sucker Punch, in this film she’s a more refined and restrained character stealing hearts more than peoples lives.
Blaxploitation legend Jackie Brown herself, Pam Grier, makes a cameo appearance as the mother of the Blacksmith, a slave who sacrifices her own freedom for her son’s life. Also making a cameo appearance as the Plantation owner who keeps the Blacksmith and his mother as slaves is the one and only Jon Benn, the gang boss from Bruce Lee’s Way of the Dragon/Return of the Dragon and the man who tried to control the Clones of Bruce Lee.
A mysterious masked killing machine known as Poison Dagger is played by Daniel Wu (One Night in Mongkok, Tai Chi Zero).
Poison Dagger lurks in the shadows manipulating the actions of others for his own gain, while Terrence Yin (Tomb Raider 2) also makes an appearance as a corrupt Government official who may know more about the feuding clans then he reveals.
A brother and sister team of assassins, the Gemini Male & Gemini Female are played respectively by Andrew Lin & Grace Huang.
Lin made a memorable Hong Kong debut as the cult-leader in Black Sheep Affair/The Meltdown , and subsequent credits include The Accident, 2000AD and many more. Lin also continues to contribute SFX make up to various projects most recently Keanu Reeves’, Man of Tai Chi.
The battling babe that is Grace Huang is the star of the acclaimed Blood Traffik short film, and she can be seen in Cold War, Love in Space, Jasmine, Lost for Words and Strangers 6, she will also be seen in the upcoming Jet Li supernatural police adventure.
Rapper turned actor MC Jin who was last seen playing Unicorn Chan in Bruce Lee My Brother, plays Chan, the comedic brother in arms to the X-Blade, while Osric Chau from 2012 and currently appearing in Supernatural plays the Blacksmith’s assistant.
Drawing upon his love for classic old school Kung Fu movies, RZA also selected the great Gordon Liu (Liu Chai-hui) to play a familiar role as The Abbott, while Andrew Ng plays the Senior Monk.
While the original Iron Monkey (Chen Kuan-tai) plays clan leader and aging warrior Gold Lion who is drawn into battle against the Hyena Chief played by Beardy himself, Leung Kar-yen.
RZA has also confirmed that his fighting style in the movie is based upon Leung Kar-yen’s Iron Cross style used in The Victim.
Kickboxer’s Dennis Chan plays a cameo role as the Dragon Inn Keeper, while actress/singer Celina Jade, last seen battling away in the Kung Fu Vettell short film plays the Dragon Inn singer, who’s choice of song is another of RZA’s nod to his love for Hong Kong cinema.
Supercapitalist’s Darren E. Scott plays the wonderfully named Rodent Chief, whose fate was revealed in one of the first pictures released from the film.
And wearing multiple hats as the visionary behind the whole project, not to mention the director, the scriptwriter and the leading man, the RZA plays the Blacksmith, a former slave who fled America and has forged a new life for himself in China.
RZA is not only an accomplished musician as a performer, a writer and producer but he’s shown his acting ability in a variety of projects, both comedic and dramatic.
A lifelong fan of Hong Kong & Kung Fu cinema in general, RZA has an encyclopedic knowledge of Asian cinema and before anyone poo-poo’s his martial arts background, I would like to say he is a genuine martial artist and a long-term student of former Shaolin disciple Shi Yan-ming. The Man with the Iron Fists is RZA’s thank you to the genre that he feels made him the man he is today, the film serves as both a homage to and companion piece to the best of martial arts cinema.
The film’s fight choreography is by the great Corey Yuen (Yuen Kwai) whose credits of course include everything from Secret Rivals, Seven Grandmasters through No Retreat No Surrender, Yes Madam, Lethal Weapon 4, The Expendables and so much more. As the trailer shows, we can expect some wild action choreography that harkens back to the classic days of traditional Kung Fu, as well as the more recent wire assisted style. The film’s cinematographer is Chan Chi-ying, whose credits include The Lost Bladesman, Detective Dee, Dead or Alive and Tokyo Raiders.
The film has been in development since 2005, with RZA writing the original story and then Eli Roth and RZA collaborating on various drafts of the screenplay, with Eric Newman and Marc Abraham coming on board as producers.
Over the course of two years RZA and Roth worked on the screenplay together, talking through every aspect of the story, down to the detail of every weapon. During the development process, Quentin Tarantino agreed to lend his name to the film with a “presented by” credit.
Principal photography began in China in December 2010 and had wrapped by late March 2011. Filming locations included the city of Shanghai, Imagemaker Studios and Hengdian World Studios.
A reported first cut of the movie clocked in at four hours and there was talk of splitting the film into two parts, but eventually the film was cut down to 96 minutes, although we hope for the subsequent DVD/Blu-Ray release we’ll get to see either a much longer cut or the deleted scenes.
Blending astonishing martial-arts sequences from some of the masters of this world with the signature vision he brings as the leader of the Wu-Tang Clan and as one of hip-hop’s most dominant figures of the past two decades, RZA has embarked upon his most ambitious, stylized and thrilling project to date and its set to hit the screen in November 2012.
It was a great pleasure to work on the project, and to see someone putting so much of their own time and energy into a project that is paying tribute to the genre of cinema that molded his life. We’re all dying to see it, Buddha Wu Tang, Wu Tang Forever!
RZA, Tragedy with Plenty of Fu!
1 Comment