Star: Dave Bautista

The Man With The Iron Fists (2012) – RZA, Russell Crowe, Dave Bautista and Lucy Liu

I have to say, this is a very weird movie. On the one hand it’s an eccentric satire of a kung fu come samurai flick, full of bastardised Laozi quotes, stinks of B movie vibes, and has the atmospherics of a kids’ cartoon; while on the other hand, it’s got stars like Russell Crowe, Dave Bautista and Lucy Liu, not to mention Cung Le, Rick Yune, Jamie Chung, Byron Mann, and RZA who also directed this movie and co-written it with the help of Eli Roth – a horror movie director who no doubt was somewhat responsible for the eccentric blood splattering that contributed to the weirdness of this movie.

For all these reasons, I can’t rate it any higher than Bang Average – I doubt anything in this weird genre can – but it’s also not any worse than average. Indeed, it’s probably as good as a movie can get in this weird slightly-eccentric slightly-satirical slightly B-movie type of oriental martial arts flick genre. It does a fair job of sustaining attention throughout, considering its shortcomings. I just want to know how the producers managed to convince the high level cast members – especially Russell Crowe – to get involved in such a B-movie level of production. In fairness, once they knew Crowe agreed, the rest were probably easy to convince, but how did they convince Crowe to stoop to these levels? He could have probably hired a better production team with his own money and not noticed anything missing from his fortune, so why waste his time on this tripe? I have no idea.

Sequel

It should come as no surprise that Crowe did not return for the sequel in 2015, which went direct to video. But they did manage to get Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa involved, and Rick Yune came back, plus of course RZA, although he didn’t direct the sequel – that job went to Roel Reiné this time – but RZA did co-write it again, with the help of John Jarrell this time round.

The quality of The Man With The Iron Fists 2 (2015) is a couple of levels down from that of the original. It has practically no special effects – just a bit of slow motion at times, and it has very little cast power too. It has a few mildly watchable parts but they’re too few & far between, and mostly too late in the movie – I had to skip through the vast majority of this movie while looking for anything watchable so I have to say the movie overall is generally unwatchable by my standards. For more than the first half of the movie, it’s pretty much solid boring drama. The last half hour or so is barely watchable, but on a better level than the prior hour.

Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014) – Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista and Zoë Saldaña

This move gets off to a bad start, with a boring-come-irritating drama scene that attempts to conjure up a traumatic experience while building a backstory for the main character. Fortunately this only lasts a few minutes, and then the better stuff gets underway.

Chris Pratt (with vibes of Seann William Scott) stars as Peter Quill – the main man in this movie. He’s a fun character with convincing acting, and carries the occasional moment of humour very well too.

Dave Bautista adds substantial value as a strong powerful ally called Drax The Destroyer, although he gets beaten easily by the main antagonist called Ronan – himself played quite well by Lee Pace with a massive dose of CGI and masking up so much that we can’t really see who he is.

Zoë Saldaña (star of Colombiana, 2011) is the main female in this movie. She’s a green woman called Gamora, and a trained killer. She joins the team of misfits, to save the galaxy, and has the odd moment of romance with Chris Pratt’s character. Her performance is adequate but nothing outstanding. She wears heavy makeup including some bits to make her look less human.

Michael Rooker plays Yondu, the head of the Ravagers, quite well.

Bradley Cooper provides the voice of Rocket, the bounty hunting raccoon; and Vin Diesel provides the voice of Groot, the talking, walking warrior tree.

Considering the ratio of tedious drama to exciting action, the ratio of easy viewing to irritating viewing, the general quality of acting, the half-smooth half-muddled script, and the general strength of cinematography, I have to rate this movie Bang Average, on a par with Captain America 1 and 2.

But if Chris Pratt had some kind of super power or incredible talent that made him special, and the main crew were not a bunch of weird alien misfits, this movie could have more of a classical superhero vibe, but as it stands it’s far more casual than exciting (when it’s not a noisy mess of drama). Although it has the odd bit of good action and the odd bit of good humour, it’s hard to get behind the main characters, some of whom are not even human, and most are weird looking beastly aliens with bright red, blue or green skin. I wouldn’t even call it childish, I’d call it too goofy or wacky-minded to relate to, and too nonchalant to really get behind. Thus, although some parts belong in a much more highly rated movie, the overall production is so full of pros & cons, it ultimately boils down to a Bang Average action hero movie by Marvel Studios. Having said that, after a long tedious patch, the ending is pretty strong and shows the specialness in Pratt’s character Peter Quill for the first time, as well as another level of ability in his main comrades (Saldaña’s Gamora, Bautista’s Drax and Cooper’s raccoon) as they’re officially dubbed the Guardians Of The Galaxy by the main antagonist, Ronan. Question is, why so late? Why suffer two hours of weak drama for one strong ending? There should have been more bits like that, to prevent this movie getting lost between genres and never surpassing mediocrity in either genre. With a few more scenes like that, this movie could have easily gone up several rating levels.

Credit also goes to Josh Brolin who barely recognisably plays Thanos (with the help of ample makeup & CGI) – the most powerful being in the universe, and Ronan’s boss (until Ronan acquired the infinity stone). Prior to Guardians, Thanos also appeared in Avengers (2012) where he was played by Damion Poitier instead; then Josh Brolin took over the role of Thanos for every subsequent movie until Avengers: Endgame (2019) where he dies.

Sequels

Next up, if you’re following all Marvel movies in order, is Avengers 2: Age Of Ultron (2015) featuring a multitude of superheroes just like the first Avengers movie from 2012, including Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Captain America, Black Widow and more, but no Peter Quill or anyone from the Guardians movie series yet, although Avengers 3: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers 4: Endgame (2019) both feature the entire Guardians team. Or if you just want to skip to the next true dedicated Guardians movie where Chris Pratt and his team of misfits get all the screen time, that would be Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 (2017). There’s also a Guardians 3 (2023) in case you’re going down that route.

Hotel Artemis (2018) – Dave Bautista

Hotel Artemis (2018)

Hotel Artemis is a novel concept that works quite well with the help of stars like Jodie Foster who plays the friendly but strict old lady who runs the hotel; Jeff Goldblum who plays the feared hotel owner and local mafia boss; Sterling K Brown who plays a lead role as a criminal taking refuge in this secure hotel for member criminals; Sofia Boutella who plays a deadly assassin; and of course Dave Bautista who plays the hotel’s one-man security force.

The action scenes are plenty, although there are some slow drama scenes between, which make this movie a bit less entertaining for action junkies, especially when it comes to rewatching it before having very well forgotten it.

Although the basic concept is an interesting one, that seems quite creative and exciting, the plot is otherwise barely existent, so this movie is barely a fraction of what it could be with the current cast and a much more substantial script.

Overall, I rate it pretty good for first time viewing, and decent enough for rewatching every few years.