Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

MBunge It's hard to review these 70s kung fu flicks. It's not like anyone watches them for deeply moving portrayals of the human condition, dialog that slices through social pretense or cinematography that makes you look at the world in a whole new way. These movies are a form of adolescently macho ballet where guys pretend to beat the holy heck out of each other in often ludicrously elaborate ways. You can evaluate them, but you've got to use a standard that doesn't apply to another other form of cinema.To start with, I'm not going to concern myself with how poorly constructed is the plot of The Iron-Fisted Monk. Husker (Sammon Hung Kam-Bo) is a goofy student at a Shao-Lin temple who runs away one day because he's anxious to get revenge on the Manchu clan who killed his uncle. So of course, he really does nothing to seek revenge until he's dragged into it kicking and screaming by Tak (Sing Chen), a villager who has both of his sisters raped and his mother killed by the Manchu. But before either of them go looking for justice, they naturally try and drag Husker's Shao-Lin master (James Tien) to a whore house. In fact, the whole "revenge" thing is almost forgotten until the Manchu slaughter an entire factory full of guys after an attempted business scam involving all the red dye in town goes awry. But, once everyone else is dead, Husker and his master do finally get around to kicking Manchu ass and taking Manchu names.There's also no point is trying to analyze any of the performances here. As with many other 70s kung fu flicks, the acting in The Iron-Fisted Monk is of a very broad and almost vaudevillian nature. Between that and the ridiculously bad dubbing of the dialog into English, it's impossible to tell if you're watching bad acting or good acting from a different cultural context.Occasionally, the direction of one of these things can be a bit more interesting than usual. That's not the case here. If you've seen another 70s kung fu flick, you pretty know what this one looks like. The only thing that ultimately matters with this film and all its brethren is…what are the fight scenes like? And the answer is…they're pretty good. The Iron-Fisted Monk is pre-wire fu, so nobody flies through air and does a triple lutz before landing on the petal of a daffodil and toe-kicking some guy across the room. But the ritualized back and forth of strike and counterstrike is pulled off nicely, with the "fights" following a certain logic and staged in such a way and you can see what each combatant is doing and trying to do. Distinguishing a lot of a action here is the fact that Sammo Hung Kam-Bo is just plain old fat. He's got a double chin and a physique like a pickle barrel, but he moves with surprising grace and power. Watching him do kung fu is like watching a guy with no fingers play the violin. That he can do it at all is impressive. That's he's really good at it is makes it impossible to take your eyes off him.The Iron-Fisted Monk also has some naked female flesh and a weirdly graphic rape scene. I say weirdly graphic because the tone of the rest of the movie is more slapstick than serious drama, yet the rape of Tak's first sister is pretty explicit and goes on for a while. The effect is almost like someone took a Three Stooges short and spliced in a few minutes from the middle of I Spit On Your Grave. But again, it's hard to know if it's crude and exploitative storytelling or it's some Chinese thing that Caucasians don't understand.If you want a see a 70s kung fu flick, this one is as good as any other. Beyond that, I'm not sure what to say.

Steamboy In some ways, it was a memorable film. It wasn't noticeably good or shockingly bad, but it had a few unusual scenes that will certainly surprise and unsettle the viewer. It is not your regular kung fu flick even though it had it all: bad guys, good guys, fights between the two and humour between the fights. For one, it also had descriptive rape scenes. I can't remember a Chinese kung fu film with sex being shown in such a crude way, clothes being ripped off, breasts popping out, lewd smirks on the rapist face and ultimately, the victim's death.That gave the film a startling and awkward contrast with the lighter scenes. A little after the sister of one of the lead characters died following a tragic chain of events, we see that same man, who seemed to be on a quest for revenge, playing around with the idea of going to a brothel with a monk. As this shows, the characters had little consistency -- and little cohesion too, even though Sammo Hung's character was supposed to be the hero, the perspective was shifting so much eventually that it felt difficult to isolate one character as the subject.Bad guys received more and more screen time, secondary characters came forth while the lead wandered off. The only appropriate way to clear up this profusion of central characters was to have them all kill each other. And so is what the script did. Confrontations suddenly pick up speed, people die en masse, "patience", which virtually was the only reason holding back everyone to settle the scores is no more, thrusting the remaining characters into the grand finale, a somewhat intimate fight between the toughest and the nastiest characters, whose unrestrained sadism had been cultivated during the infamous rapes.As if in response to these extreme scenes, the makers chose to end with another extreme, gory violence. Like it or not, it does feel fair, but fair as in a talion. Without these short sadistic bouts that seemed borrowed from American exploitation films of the time, it would have been a pretty unremarkable kung fu story. The fights, well-choreographed and using the classic animal postures dear to a long kung fu tradition, are however terribly choppy, to the point that you could easily time the moves "one-two, one-two" as they are performed. Iron-Fisted Monk is not a good kung fu film to start with, it is an oddity that will be met with greater interest by longtime B-movie amateurs.

Guardia Excellently crafted kung-fu film dealing with the conflict between the Manchus and the Shaolin monks. We see the barbaric actions of the Manchus from early on in the film, and the tension builds quite steadily until there is only one option left: fight to the death.Sammo is brilliant as usual and his directorial talent can be identified in this film clearly. His martial artistry is great and his strength improves as things get more desperate. His use of the spear in the final reel is awesome. Also, watch out for the snake-fist styles towards the end.That said, this is a pretty challenging film in that it portrays senseless and random abuse towards women and children - well pretty much the whole village really. But I guess it makes the revenge angle all that much sweeter... and righteous: (Buddha be praised).

abentenjo Breaking barriers and setting new standards in on-screen fight choreography, Sammo's directorial debut is a must for any chop socky aficionado, and although not his best work (a warm up to Warriors Two), it can easily stand proudly amongst them. It's hodgepodge of a story acts as a boiling pot of escalating annihilation, until exploding in a fury of that unique fast and colourful Sammo choreography that we just love so much. Centring on the real-life legend of 'Miller Six' (Sammo), Iron Fisted Monk is driven by a powerful anti-Manchu narrative that feels relentless in its onslaught (they rape, kill, maim and pillage, not to mention bully little kiddies). Miller Six's uncle is killed, he learns the martial arts at the local Shaolin temple, and then off he goes for vengeance. And it's really as simple as that. This is a great movie - well choreographed (by Sammo), well directed (by Sammo) and with some great performances (especially that scoundrel Fung Hark-on who's simply irresistible as a downright evil Manchu warlord).