Iron Monkey 2

Donnie Yen returns in this "sequel" to the 1993 classic that was considered by many to be one of the best kung fu movies ever. This one however, is a far cry from that status. The storyline takes place probably 40-50 years after the first one did. Donnie Yen replaces Yu Rong Gwong as the Iron Monkey and does battle w/ some corrupt warlords and arms dealers.

There are a lot of characters in this movie, many of which don't seem to have a real place within the structure of the story. Billy Chow is made out to be a major character but doesn't appear until the end of the movie. The Iron Monkey character is not defined and really doesn't have a huge part in the movie. A lot of the story concentrates on a pair of con artists and a man looking for his father.

Now let's discuss the fight scenes. The fight scenes are really fast and high-energy. Donnie Yen uses a lot of wing chun and his usual tae kwon do/wushu kicking. He's impressive, as is his co-star. Billy Chow's kickboxing is impressive as well. The wires aren't overdone (a complaint made against the original Iron Monkey film). The main problem is constant speeding up of the camera.

In conclusion, this movie fails as a sequel to Iron Monkey, but as just a kung fu movie, it's pretty good. 7/10

There was the first Iron Monkey that featured Chen Kuan Tai in the lead role. Chen was very good as the Iron Mokey. In this, Donny Yuen plays the role of Iron Monkey. The two movies are not connected in any ways.

This movie is made by a little known Hong Kong company called the Gold Rush. It's a period piece taking place just before the second world war. The production is very derivative with little bit of Jackie Chan's Project A, and other movies of this genre. The movie is shot very low quality, and other details are equally of lower quality. It's like the '70s movie made in the '90s, and looks dated. I've never seen the actors that starred in this movie before or since except Donny Yuen.

Story is mostly about nothing - not much happens except for lot of dialogs between the actors. Japanese are portrayed as the bad guys, and so are the Russians.

So unfortunately, this one doesn't measure up to the original Iron Monkey in any ways, nor does it measure up to other Hong Kong movies of the same era.

Inspector Cool Head (not my translation), an honest cop who suspects a frame on someone accused of murder. It's the kind of movie you keep telling yourself, I'm just going to watch it for another 5 minutes.....next thing you know the movie is over. At times the DVD picture was clean, but more often than not it seemed I was watching a tape in extended play. I would recommend a rental instead of a purchase.

Iron Monkey would not have been so bad if it had been subtitled instead of dubbed over, but it would still have been awful.

The fight scenes are crappy and everything else is unintentionally funny. The direction is...well... bad. Many things about this movie are BAD. The cinematography, if you can call it that, is choppy, crappy, uneven and fake. Most parts when they are trying to make it look like something is falling into place, it looks like they shot it falling (or CGI'd it) then shot a seperate cut with it in place. Really REALLY crappy movie.

This is one of the worst martial arts movies I have ever seen. It's not even funny, just painfully bad. I'll give it 2/10 just because some of the fight scenes were mediocre, not terrible.

I was zapping through, looking for something to watch in a post-lunch Sunday afternoon when I stopped at this TV show which usually airs martial arts films. I stood in rapt amazement when I saw that this week film would be "Iron Monkey II". I had rented the first film (from 1993, remastered by Tarantino in 2002, I think) and had really enjoyed it. So I thought: "Ok, Donnie Yen kicking asses throughout the film"... how wrong I was! The plot is somewhat hard to explain: a brother and a sister cheat a just-arrived-in-town guy to help them rob some weapons. Then they get in trouble with the "mafia-like-bad-guy" of the film. Meanwhile, the cheated guy is looking for his dad and bumps into Iron Monkey.

The first film depicted the Iron Monkey as a sort of ninja, concealing his identity. Donnie Yen played a support role there. Here, he's the Monkey, but he wears no mask (except in one scene but you can't even get if it's him or someone else), and wanders around trying to save the day with his face revealed. Furthermore, the action, if any, is focused on the two brothers and the other guy, and the Monkey does not appear much. The rest is the usual fighting scenes Asian films have accustomed us to. It managed to keep me watching, but merely to see something spectacular happen (and I'm still waiting) A BIG problem here is that the movie does not fit much with the first one: the 1993 film was set in the 19th century. This one goes in the 20th, and the Monkey is probably the only link to the other. I'm inclined to believe this was a script (how rare it sounds here) for something else, and they turned it into this sequel. If so, they should not have stained the previous movie with such a mediocre result.

Conclussion: if you like Donnie Yen, try and watch "Heroes among Heroes", his cameos in "Shanghai Knights", "Highlander:Endgame", "Blade II", or the original Monkey (All but Blade are recommended) rather than this. If you like martial arts, watch it without expectation and you might end up not THAT disappointed, like me.

I give it a 3.