Synopsis
No Rules. No Mercy. Pure Fighting.
In Beijing, a young martial artist's skill places him in position to experience opportunities and sacrifices.
2013 Directed by Keanu Reeves
In Beijing, a young martial artist's skill places him in position to experience opportunities and sacrifices.
China Film Group Corporation Universal Pictures Dalian Wanda Group Company Films Village Roadshow Pictures Asia China Film Group
Majstor tai chia, Le maître du Tai-Chi, O mahitis tou Tai Chi, O Homem do Tai Chi, Мастер тай-цзи, Ο Μαχητής του Τάι Τσι, El poder del Tai Chi, קרב עד הסוף, 太极侠, A Tai Chi harcosa, Człowiek Tai Chi, Ucigaș cu suflet pur, Muž taiči, Майстер тайцзи, 맨 오브 타이 치, Тай-Чи майстор, 太極俠, Muž tajči, El Maestro del Tai Chi, ファイティング・タイガー
certainly comparing Keanu Reeves as a martial arts filmmaker to Lau Kar-Leung would be a massive overstatement, but it's worth pointing out that he stages his fights with a similar attention to athletic performance, using the moves themselves to dictate the camera and cuts, and he frames the fight scenes in a narrative focused on the philosophy of the form at hand. it's unostentatious and refreshingly clean, clearly influenced by his experience with the Wachowskis (and especially Yuen Woo-ping) and his own study.
This makes no sense at all.
Basically, Man of Tai Chi is a (too) long, ridiculous trope. There are more fight scenes than dialogue, somewhere there is a plot, it features a martial art that isn't a martial art and it has old Ent face acting and directing.
Well, slap me silly and call me Suzan, but this actually was fun. Three things make this work really well, two of which feature Keanu Reeves which, to me at least, is a bit of a shocker.
First and foremost there are the fight scenes. They are simply fantastic. The way Reeves choreographs them and presents them to us is visceral, exciting and hearkens back to the glory days of the martial…
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Film #13 of the February Movie Challenge : Keanu Reeves or Bust!
letterboxd.com/naughty/list/february-movie-challenge-keanu-reeves-or/
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Keanu Reeves's directorial debut was no stunner but not too shabby for a newcomer! If were honest we would be quick to admit we don't come to a martial arts themed film for the drama! We come to watch well choreographed no holds barred fight scenes! On that note I'd say Keanu Reeves more than delivered! The long fight scenes were in my opinion its greatest strength!
Keanu Reeves appearance as the villain in the film was actually quite good! I especially enjoyed his contribution to the grand finale's fight scene! (Didn't care for how the showdown ended)
While the narrative and anti climatic ending may have left much to be desired the film managed to uphold and maintain a certain level of entertainment value!
Keanu Reeves directed Chinese action film feels pitched pretty much at his acting strengths: attuned to physicality, lean to almost expressionless, even the sets seems decorated to be barely functional. Whenever action stops Man of Tai Chi just becomes under directed in a rather pleasing way and every time it restarts it comes with such concentration and staged (and mostly edited) with rare intelligence and also varied enough not to get monotone like It happens in a film like The Raid. I also like the way it feeds on the film rather unusual production subtext: an well-known star debuts as director with a martial arts film set and mostly aimed at Chinese, his foreignness is often at center stage along with the mix of respect and distance which it treats its subject matter. The film runs out of steam before the end, but it is rather smart and has a truly interesting sensibility.
Keanu Reeves directed an action movie out of the blue and he clapped so fucking hard. On the surface it's your garden variety underground fighting movie, but Keanu infuses so much weirdness, personality and visual panache that it feels entirely unique.
I love that he randomly decided to make his directorial debut as a vehicle for a stuntman friend of his, almost like a meta, but entirely benevolent version of the events that happen in the film. Tiger Chen has funny charm to him, he's very unimposing, with goofy 80's Jackie Chan action hair. To put it in perspective Iko Uwais is the world's friendliest looking action star and when he makes a cameo later on in the film makes…
FINISH HIM
Kind of whips. Takes an approach to martial arts where it mixes both its status as a means for sports entertainment and something that can easily be used as deadly force in the wrong hands. Tiger Chen may not be the best actor, but boy can he fight, and holy cow can Reeves apparently direct fight sequences very well. The way one on one fights are shot lands in the middle of the Wachowskis and Gareth Evans, lengthy bits of hard-hitting blows with specific intricacies. Makes tai chi look like the coolest thing mankind has ever invented. I am also fascinated by how Keanu in his directorial debut goes completely against type to play a villain whose whole…
"We want to see the loss of innocence."
This one's all about the stunts and the choreography, and in that respect it certainly delivers, but there's something interesting that happens here on a metatextual level as well. At first, Tiger Chen's journey is all about his increasing overinvestment in himself, his desire for power and for pride and to be "better" than each of his opponents, a gradual abdication of the selflessness of tai chi practice, but then Keanu's underground fight club makes it about something else: it makes it about the other, it turns the fights not only into entertainment but into exploitation, into visual pleasure and narrative cinema, as Laura Mulvey would immortally phrase it. And the point…
Wow.....Keanu Reeves not only starred in this movie....but directed it as well. Wow....Keanu Reeves actually does a pretty good job behind the camera. Wow.....sadly Keanu Reeves did not have much of a script to work with in this one. Wow....I like action movies....but spending almost 2 hours of watching non-stop fighting gets a little boring. Final thought: Wow.... I give Reeves kudos for directing this one....but this is a pretty average movie. FYI...while reading this review please insert whichever Keanu Reeves line reading of "Wow" you like the most...whenever you see "Wow" in the review.
I feel like at this point in time, I need to give the John Wick films another chance. I've had this passionate fling with action cinema over the past few years, and the JW trilogy (soon to be quadrilogy) is one of the leading figures in contemporary action filmmaking. As I was going through Keanu Reeves' credits, I noticed a strange outlier - a film from 2013, directed by Mr Reeves, about Tai Chi. I had to check it out first.
Man of Tai Chi explores the seedy underbelly of illegal fighting. A Tai Chi student is inducted into this mysterious world of gladiatorial battle, not competitive fighting like he's used to, but real physically brutal fighting. NO referees. No…
Man of Tai Chi war meine erste Berührung mit dem Freevee Dienst von Amazon. Heisst, da ich schon etliche Jahre kein normales TV mehr schaue, war dies mein erster Film seit Ewigkeiten den ich mit Werbung geschaut habe. Und meine Güte, war das nervig.
Nun habe ich Iko Uwais' Filmografie vervollständigt. Auch wenn er hier leider wieder nur eine wirklich kleine Rolle hat, in der noch nicht mal ansatzweise zeigen darf was er kann. Im Grunde wird in der Szene mehr Fangen gespielt als gekämpft. Aber in den restlichen Kampfszenen weiss Man of Tai Chi durchaus zu überzeugen. Da sind Leute am Werk die ihr Handwerk verstehen. Die Fights sind gut choreografiert und nicht zerschnitten, so dass man als Zuschauer…
It hit me about five minutes in: Keanu Reeves has been spending his entire career playing the wrong kinds of characters. His weird aged boyishness and mannered line readings make him a non-starter as a romantic lead but as a villain in a Hong Kong action movie he's perfect!
I was just as impressed by Reeves' work behind the camera. He does a lot of things right, including some unexpectedly subtle conveyance of video surveillance (one of the movie's key themes) through the camerawork.
There's some media satire in there too, so a little more meat on the bone than in your usual martial arts movie. But those bones crunch with the best of them, thanks to some typically great fight direction from Yuen Woo-Ping.
If the trailer for this movie doesn't include the first "fight!" shock-edit then someone deserves to get fired.
I had oddly high hopes for a Keanu Reeves-directed film. Knowing it to be a martial arts film, what I hoped for was competent martial arts sequences and minimal plot. What I wanted was something without a lot of dialogue and with a lot of physicality. What I got was a bit of what I wanted and a bit of what I didn't.
The bad parts of this were mostly in the acting, which is redeemed slightly by the absurdity of it all. Keanu Reeves' laughter is so awkward and unnatural that it becomes funny to hear. If it's intentional, it makes his character that much more bizarre. If it's not intentional, it's entertaining that that was the best they…