christian-11
In the 80's, Martial Arts movies where a lot more dominant in the market. It was mainly really good martial artists with poor acting skills.Then - slowly - came the choreographers and the CGI dudes and made every actor a martial artists. The acting got better, the fighting got worse.In Man of Tai Chi, we're back. There's a lot of respect for the martial arts in this movie. When there's a Tae-Kwon-Do fighter, he uses Tae-kwon-do moves. All fighters, except Keanu, knows their stuff.I wanted to see more of Iko Uwais (from The Raid), and I wanted to see less of Keanu, but it's still a solid 9 judged purely as a martial arts film.Would love to see Keanu Reeves diving into this and become the next John Woo.
Robin Turner
Just like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was Ang Lee's tribute to wuxia films, Man of Tai Chi is Keanu Reeves' tribute to 1980s chop sockey films. It's nowhere in the same league as Crouching Tiger, but it's still fun. It has all the tropes you'd expect: young ambitious student, wise old master, old temple, illegal fight club, different styles lined up against each other, using the Force, going over to the Dark Side ... uh, hang on, I'm getting my genres mixed up here.My main gripe with the film is that there wasn't enough t'ai chi in it. There's some nice pushing hands in a training scene near the beginning, and Tiger strikes a few t'ai chi poses (though why anyone would adopt Single Whip as an opening stance, I have no idea), but most of his fighting is the usual acrobatic film fu. If the aim of the character, and presumably the director, is to show that t'ai chi is a fighting method and not just a mystical-looking exercise, then it's counter-productive to abandon it as soon as a serious fight starts.All in all, if you enjoyed classics like Bloodsport, you'll get your money's worth out of Man of Tai Chi. Just don't expect anything deep; this is just Keanu Reeves having fun with a genre he loves.
Leofwine_draca
MAN OF TAI CHI marks a collaboration between Hollywood and China as the studios join forces to make a traditional tournament-based martial arts flick. The film is directed by and stars Keanu Reeves as an evil millionaire who mounts violent fight tournaments and broadcasts them to internet viewers in a bid for fame and fortune.What MAN OF TAI CHI has going for it are the plentiful fight sequences, all of them expertly choreographed by Yuen-Woo Ping. It's hard to go wrong with tournament-style films - they're a staple of B-movies, after all - and the almost constant stream of hard-hitting fights makes this great fun to sit through.There's little more to it than the action, however, seeing as the film is deeply flawed. Reeves's debut direction is applaudable, but they could have picked a better person than a composer to write the trite, predictable storyline. Elsewhere, Tiger Hu Chen proves to be a charisma-free leading man, despite his impressive tai chi skills, while Karen Mok overacts for all her worth. Simon Yam is barely in it despite being prominently billed. Worst of all, Iko Uwais makes a cameo appearance and doesn't even get to fight - the dumbest decision in the entire movie. My recommendation is to watch it for the fights but don't go in expecting much else, because you won't get it.
heartstream
Warning. Some of what I'm writing below, could be considered spoiler!Well we all know that Keanu ranges from bad to appalling as an actor, and this is no exception! He goes from overacting to wooden in every scene he is in and after a while you actually start to cringe and frown as soon as you see him appear, in anticipation of what he will "deliver this time". His fighting skills are not completely horrible, but it's not enough to deliver a decent fight scene against even a moderate fighter in a non-important scene in the movie. To fight in the final showdown? Oh, dear Lord....no no no! The final fight, even though it was sadly predictable, turns into a yawn-fest and quite frankly I found myself laughing at how ridiculous his fighting and acting was here. The movie itself is a mish-mash. Keanu tries to put: culture, old vs new china, a "new" fighting style, a touch of love story, police corruption, illegal fighting with cameras and .....well it keeps on a bit more. Lets just say he tries to put in a lot of stories and angles into this movie, which is always hard to then tell properly, and in a fighting movie it gets almost impossible. The fighting scenes are OK, some are quite good, but the story leaves very much to be desired! It scratches the surface on a lot of subjects and leaves most of it hanging like broken webs in the wind. My expectation for this movie was quite low, so it didn't have to deliver much to make me pleasantly surprised, but it failed miserably.There's so many b-movies with way better fighting than this, and better acting too I'm afraid, so no....don't watch this unless you're a Keanu-fan. You'd be better of watching an old Van Damme or Jackie Chan movie for the 15th time =)
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