October 11–18, 2001

movie shorts

Iron Monkey

(recommended)

Quentin Tarantino was barely done assessing fines for unrewound videos when Yuen Wo Ping’s Iron Monkey was first released in 1993. In the wake of warm audience reception to Yuen’s balletic kung fu choreography in The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Tarantino and Miramax are bringing Yuen’s unseen-but-for-the-fanboys nonesuch back for some big-screen Monkey business. Something of a Chinese Zorro, the Iron Monkey (Yu Rong Guang) is a respected doctor by day who fights oppression and champions the peasant class in the guise of a black-shrouded high-kickin’ superhero with a price on his head. When evil "Shaolin punks" come to town, the Monkinator and his ladyfriend-assistant Orchid (Jean Wang) team up with an itinerant asskicker (Donnie Yen) and his young son (who will grow up to be the hero of Yuen’s 1978 Drunken Master) to combat wickedness, one furious fist at a time. The script, co-written by Tsui Hark (who also produced), dispenses with unnecessary foofaraw like character and motivation; instead, each nifty, impossibly inventive fight scene follows hard on the still-smoking heels of the last. In the end, foes are vanquished, good prevails and the audience leaves with goofy grins and the wish to ride the rollercoaster one more time.

—Ryan Godfrey