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Iron Monkey Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 19 Reviews)

more like Wired Monkey
This is wire-fu all the way. Lotsa flying, floating, & fighting. Yuen Woo Ping directs another good one with Donnie Yen looking cooler and acting badder(as in bad-ass badder, not bad-acting badder) then ever. Yu Rong Guang is dignified as our hero and the young Wong Fei Hung(actually played by a girl) character has her, I mean his, own fight scene. Most fights are fairly brief but exciting and fun. Some fights are sped up, but that only adds to the hyper and frenetic feel to the movie. Overall, a good movie, some great scenes, but I felt the much praised final fight on top of the wood poles was disappointing. I'd much prefer to see an all out straight-up fight...Btw, I would give this film 5 stars, but it's no Drunken Master 2 or Fist of Legend. Note: this review is for the HK subbed version that I saw. I have no idea how the US dvd version of the American release will turn out. I shudder at the thought. But hey, if you liked it in the theaters, then get the dvd here.

Great Movie
I originally saw this movie on a bootlegged Chinese videotape, shortly after it was released in its original version. My friend had an overseas connection, and we watched lots of Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat, and Donnie Yen movies before they became popular over here. Of course, we couldn't understand a word of them, but we enjoyed the action sequences nonetheless.

Then, earlier this year while I was renting as many HK action flicks as I could on DVD :) I found a copy of Iron Monkey as a DVD rental, and watched it again with subtitles. I was very pleased to find that I was able to follow the story pretty well (unlike alot of cheesy HK action flicks). So, not only did it have great action, but it had a great plot as well.

Now, thanks to the popularity of Yuen Wo Ping (The Matrix, CTHD), Iron Monkey is coming to theaters, and I'm definitely interested in seeing it on the big screen. That will complete some sort of odd Iron Monkey trifecta for me, I guess. heh

I just hope that Yuen Wo Ping doesn't start turning out really cheesy American flicks like Jackie Chan did after his success (Ok, Rush Hour was good, but what was up with Shanghai Noon?). Or like Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat, John Woo, or like Wo Ping's brother has done with Charlie's Angels 2000. It must be the curse of Hollywood that these guys are such great talents but are completely wasted when they come to America. Let's hope that Wo Ping can keep cranking out material on the order of The Matrix.

Not as good as "Crouching Tiger..." but still good.
Yuen Woo-Ping...sound familiar? It should. He has choreographed fight scenes in "The Matrix," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," and "Fist Of Legend." Well, he took a crack at directing his own movie in 1993 (pre-Matrix and pre-Crouching Tiger) and it's was called "Iron Monkey 2" even though it was hardly a sequel to the 1977 original. Well, we in good ol' America are just now getting this movie, except ours is called "Iron Monkey." It must sound like a funny title to us, but the Iron Monkey is basically a Chinese version of Robin Hood. You know, "Steal from the rich and give to the poor" type of stuff. Except this Robin Hood knows some pretty funky Kung-Fu, which is what makes this movie awesome. The fight scenes are some of the best ever made. Sure, it's fake because these guys just fly off the ground, but you have to let your mind past all the and just watch how beautiful the fight sequences are. The plot, a bit lame. The dubbing in this viewing I must admit is cruddy and probably the most negative thing about the movie, besides the lame boss. If you want to see a non-dub version, buy the DVD from Hong-Kong. If you don't like to read, I guess the U.S. version will do. See it if you are a die hard Kung-Fu flying action fan! PG-13 because of intense action and brief sexuality.

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