Recently I discovered something while browsing streaming services: There are a lot of Kung Fu movies online.

I discovered this mostly by looking through Netflix, but I’ve also found a few on the other streaming services I have. There is a decent share of martial arts movies, whether from Asia or the west, on these services. And the variety is huge too, from classic martial arts movies made in China to more recent productions made in America. 

While this isn’t exactly an incredible life-changing revelation, it is a personal little bit of serendipity. I watched a few martial arts movies as a kid, but hardly consistently. I have always wanted to get into Martial Arts movies properly and I feel generally as a genre there hasn’t been so much attention on it. So I’ll both be logging my journey into the genre and bringing attention to some quality and not so quality films.

So, the Man of Tai Chi.

This is a Keanu Reeves directorial debut, where he works with a stuntman named Tiger Chen who is playing the lead role: Tiger Chen.

That’s one of the weird things about the movie, other than the fact that it’s being directed by the guy who said “whoa” in the Matrix. Tiger Chen is playing Tiger Chen. But it sort of works somehow, but more on that later.

The movie tells the story of Tiger Chen who is the practitioner of a combat oriented branch of Tai Chi. The story follows him as he becomes embroiled in an underground fighting ring, yielding more and more to his dark and impulsive side.

One of the interesting things about this movie is the use of a martial art style which is not typically thought of as dangerous in combat. Tai Chi is typically a martial art which isn’t really seen as Martial, rather a set of calming exercises which improve health and meditate the mind. In the story, this has the effect of leading others to underestimate Tiger as they think Tai Chi is just for show.

The cast of characters and the actors who play them has some weak points, but also some really stand out performances. Tiger Chen is played well by Tiger Chen, which is good as playing someone with your name poorly would be very embarrassing. Generally, he pulls off the physical acting very well, but his line reads are a mixed bag. He feels most genuine when he’s angry or in a fight, but at other times he can feel a bit off. He generally seems much better at delivering his lines in Chinese than in English, which is fair enough as he speaks Chinese throughout most of the movie.

Keanu Reaves plays the Villain, Donaka Mark, and his performance as the antagonist has convinced me fully that he should have been Agent Smith. Keanu’s stone face really complements the role of a cold-hearted CEO who wants to watch two people beat each other to death. The character himself is a bit underdeveloped and bland, but Keanu’s performance brings a sort of joy to watch him on the screen that’s hard to explain. Many of the awkward mannerisms he has helps play up the B movieness of the entire picture in a good way. He does, however, have an annoying habit of repeating lines.

The supporting cast is generally really good. Karen Mok, a regular actor in martial arts related movies, plays the inspector in a side plot involving investigating Donaka Mark and she plays that role well. The archetypal Kung Fu master is played rather well by a Kung Fu movie veteran named Hai Yu. There aren’t really any bad performances from any of them.

Where the movie shines is in its fight choreography and how those fights are shot. There’s a good mix of close up and long shots which help you both see the moves close up and the fight in its totality. Some inventive fights are based on interesting ideas, for example when Tiger goes for a job interview that turns into a brawl, and his opponent uses his smartly dressed tie to throw him around. Each of the individual fight scenes in the movie is unique and well done, each of the notable ones having some sort of twist or feature that distinguishes them.

Tiger Chen’s martial arts style is really fun to watch as it often has these stylistic flourishes and fun details. He often uses his opponent’s force against them or deflects blows with disarming sweeping motions. There are also times when he eschews the more elegant parts of his style for more brutal movements, which coincide with his character development.

Of course, the double-edged sword of this movie is its lack of realism. It can provide some really stylistic fights that look amazing, but many of the details do leave you thinking “really?” Tiger Chen throws people around like they’re ragdolls a little too often for my suspension of disbelief. On the other hand, this realism is sacrificed for a enourmouslly enjoyable spectacle.

The personal journey of Tiger is interesting and engaging. The character himself seems interesting as a soul who the villain plans to cause to fall to the “dark side” of fighting and the scenes where we do see that dark side are interesting. However, his journey is generally pretty predictable. Generally, you have an idea of what’s going to happen to him that is one to three steps ahead of the actual story.

There are several notable weak points. The plot outside of Tiger Chen’s involvement is very, very generic. There is a side plot of a Hong Kong detective investigating Keany Reeve’s character’s underground fighting ring. It’s extremely generic and doesn’t add much to the movie other than giving Tiger a way to stop the ring itself.

The side story follows all the beats of the generic cop story. Karen Mok plays an intense detective who is told by her superior to stay away from the case but feels an overwhelming need to hunt down the bad guy because he killed someone she was responsible for, so she tracks him down in order to get evidence so her boss will let her arrest him. It could only get more generic if she had a gruff older male partner who said “I’m ten days from retirement” and then died tragically. There’s even a twist in the story that you’ll probably be able to figure out way ahead of time because it’s fairly trite.

The second main problem is the villain. Donaka Mark is perhaps the most poorly written villain since Malekith from Thor 2 (You probably don’t remember Malekith or Thor 2 which proves my point). Why does he have an underground fighting ring? The movie’s best answer is “because he likes it.” Why is he a Kung Fu badass? No explanation. Why doesn’t he just kill the detective he knows is investigating him? No real reason. He doesn’t really have much-established motivation for anything other than perhaps that it’s implied he does what he does for shits and giggles.

Another problem is the central teme. The whole conflict of the movie is centered around the idea that for Tiger Chen, killing people is bad. That to kill would be a corruption of his good nature. The problem is that this is treated as a truism. It’s not stated or implied why kicking the crap out of someone is okay but killing someone is bad.

And yes, killing people is generally agreed on to be bad. However, in a movie where the whole point of the story is to explore the emotional conflict between Tiger’s aggression and his control, there isn’t really a good argument made for control. Should he not kill because human life is sacred? Should he not kill because it’s a dishonorable act? Should he not kill because it’s a cruel act to another human being? Is it because of all those reasons? The movie barely even goes so far as to say “it’s bad because it’s bad.” At most it gives the explanation it would corrupt his soul.

For comparison, Batman is a famous superhero who does not kill. His reasons for doing so very subtly from incarnation to incarnation, but generally, Batman does not kill because that is what distinguishes him from the criminals he fights. To kill would make him as bad as the thing he wants to stop.

Tiger Chen fights for money to save his master’s temple or for pleasure throughout the story, so he can’t really claim that to kill would make him as bad as the people he fights, because they fight for basically the same reason.

This wouldn’t be a problem if the movie didn’t take itself so deathly seriously. I can suspend my disbelief for crazy impossible fighting moves, but when you start inserting questions of morality and character and don’t explain rationales or motivations, you open yourself up to criticism.

Despite these problems, overall I think I could recommend the movie. It’s got some good fight scenes and an interesting character journey. It’s pretty unique as the only Keanu Reeves directorial project to date, so if you’re a fan of his I’d say definitely check this out, just don’t go into this movie expecting it to blow your mind.