What happened to The Matrix big star Keanu Reeves? We don’t see him much these past three years in Philippine cinemas. According to his filmography at IMDB, he had two films in 2010 and 2012 plus a short appearance on a TV series but it was not shown here. Well, he’s now back in Man of Tai Chi. Take note not just as a star but as the director.
Marking as his directorial debut, Tiger (Tiger Chen) is the last remaining student of Ling Kong Tai Chi. He wants to make his master Yang and parents proud by joining the national martial arts tournament where he catches the attention of ruthless businessman Donaka Mark (Keanu Reeves) who runs an underground fighting ring in Hong Kong. Donaka offers to compensate him for every match he wins. Initially, he is very hesitant but his master’s temple is facing a demolition notice if it didn’t meet the government’s safety standards which will require him a lot of money to accomplish the renovations. Having realized that his delivery job isn’t enough to cover the cost, he chose to accept the offer. Along the way, he realized that the fights are not what they seem to be as Donaka’s real plans unfold.
Tiger Chen was a stunt team member for The Matrix where he met Reeves. Over the course of the trilogy, their friendship developed and he assumed more prominent stunt roles. After having deeper conversations about the Tao of Life, Chi and martial arts, they decided to collaborate together to develop a feature film about Tai Chi wherehe gets his break as he plays the film’s protagonist. He doesn’t carry the so called “future Asian big star” charisma and presence that will boost him for more lead projects but he makes his action scenes convincing showing off why he got two World Stunt Awards nominations in his belt. Interestingly, the Matrix lead star is now the support to his former stunt man taking on the film’s villain role. In an ideal Hollywood world, their roles would be reversed. I think Reeves decided to step back because he realized that he isn’t the IT guy he was before in The Matrix. For his role as Donaka Mark, Reeves limited himself by showing less emotion trying to depict a reserved menace but the end result is a very stiff performance.
As I have mentioned, Reeves is not just the actor in this film. He’s also the director. For his debut, I can see that he made some efforts in terms of filmmaking techniques particularly in transition shots. Overall, he still has more to learn and to improve but he did manage to make you attentive in the action scenes. I can’t give the full credit to him because it’s mostly fight choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping’s contribution. The match sequences are gripping and well executed. They didn’t feel repetitive.
Story-wise, I didn’t find scenes outside of fighting that engaging. There are some interesting elements like the fights getting televised and the fact that the fighters get some fandom among televiewers which reminded me of The Hunger Games. I believe this can be used to add something to story but they didn’t utilize these to its fullest potential. They also tried to add a romance subplot but it was short enough to invest on something. Back on the fight scenes, they are the only entertaining portion of the story. The problem is that it somewhat lost its excitement when the film goes on to the cliché of the genre as it reaches the conclusion. For instance, the prior match scenes are more thrilling than the less exciting climatic showdown between Donaka and Tiger.
“Man Of Tai Chi” is released and distributed by United International Pictures through Solar Entertainment Corp.
Verdict:
As a martial arts film, it delivers the martial arts but didn’t deliver an overall good film.
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About the movie reviewer:
Orange Magazine TV‘s newest film critic is a self-confessed movie geek. John Albert Villanueva love movies so much, he watch every movies from the big screen and collects DVDs of classic movies. Read his other review here.
