Man of Tai Chi

The directorial debut of Keanu Reeves was a particularly exciting prospect. Any martial arts film with Yuen Woo Ping as the choreographer is a must-see, but throwing in stars like Iko Uwais, Tiger Chen, Simon Yam and Karen Mok made this especially enticing.

Man of Tai Chi is a twist on a classic tournament-style martial arts film. Fighters engage in brutal unarmed combat while being filmed by hidden cameras for high-paying, bloodthirsty internet customers around the world.

The film follows a fictional character Tiger Chen - played by a real man named Tiger Chen - as he puts his Tai Chi skills to use in an official Kung Fu tournament before being lured into a deadly underground fight club. Tiger is compelled to earn money through fighting to save his master's temple, despite his master insisting Tai Chi should never be used to make money through fighting. Keanu plays an evil businessman who lures Tiger into the illegal fighting ring, while a tenacious police officer tries to gather evidence on the operation.

Keanu is, as always, pretty bad on-screen. The guy was good in the Bill & Ted movies, but not much else. Adding to his lack of acting ability and general laughableness, in this film he is putting on a cartoonishly gruff voice similar to Christian Bale's in the Dark Knight movies.

There's also some problems with the storyline of Man of Tai Chi, mainly with some baffling and silly developments around the film's conclusion. I can't really spell these out without giving spoilers, but they're pretty stupid.

But those sorts of issues don't matter - this is a fight movie; a refreshingly straight-up, old school fight movie. So what matters is how satisfying the fights are, and little else.

The fight scenes, while at times great, are frustrating. There are some truly beautiful moves performed in Man of Tai Chi as Tiger Chen and his opponents are very highly skilled. The sheer amount of screen time spent on fight scenes is also impressive - it seems like over half.

But there are two fights that are over extremely quickly when they really shouldn't be. Iko Uwais had the lead role in The Raid, the best action movie of the last few years and certainly the best martial arts film since Ong Bak. I was super excited to see him fight Tiger Chen in this and sadly, they barely trade any blows at all.

The climactic fight is instead, predictably, between Tiger and Keanu. It's not too bad, but it is plagued by an issue that negatively affects all of the fight scenes in the film. They're not directed all that well - sorry, Keanu. The choreography is fantastic and you do get to see some really awesome moves, but the sound design and camerawork take away a lot of the impact that these fight scenes should have. This is the film's primary problem.


I enjoyed the action of Man of Tai Chi quite a bit nonetheless; but in the hands of a more experienced director and more time devoted to the two most promising fights, I would've enjoyed it a heck of a lot more.
I love that this is Keanu's directorial debut, however, rather than some mopey little American indie film or something. There are quite a few nice little touches that clearly show he has a genuine passion for Kung Fu movies. If he keeps working with talent as strong as this and ups his game as a filmmaker, we could be in for some really cool stuff from him in the future.

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