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Iron Monkey director Yuen Woo-ping hasn't helmed a film in over six years, and although he's hardly a household name in the U.S., many may know him as the guy responsible for choreographing the incredible fight scenes in Oscar winners The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Thanks to Quentin Tarantino, who has a more-than-decent track record when it comes to releasing cooler-than-cool Asian films in the States (see Chungking Express, Sonatine and Mighty Peking Man), people will finally understand why overseas audiences yawned when they saw Crouching Tiger.
Monkey was originally released in 1993 (it's already available here on video and DVD) and was such a big hit that its sequel is now five years old. The movie is somewhat of a prequel to the immensely popular and much revered Once Upon a Time in China, the seven-film (and counting) series that catapulted Jet Li to international stardom. Monkey and China, not to mention Jackie Chan's Drunken Master pictures, tell the story of a Chinese folk legend named Wong Fei-Hung, who was something like the Davy Crockett of that country during the mid 1800s.
Here, Fei-Hung is a child (and is played by a young girl named Tsang Sze-Man), who, along with his father Wong Kei-Ying (Donnie Yen, Highlander: Endgame), have just arrived in Zhejing, a city run by the crooked Governor Cheng (James Wong). With thousands of peasants seeking refuge in the city courtesy of rural flooding and bloodthirsty warlords, Cheng keeps a huge stockpile of food while his subjects dine on stone soup. Their only hope is Iron Monkey, a mysterious Robin Hood-type who liberates the Governor's gold and gives it to the commoners.
As you might expect, Iron Monkey, who is really a mild-mannered local doctor (Yu Rong-guang), is not very well-received by the Governor and the soldiers who are paid to protect him. When word arrives that the Royal Minister (Yen Yee Kwan) is on his way to Zhejing to get to the bottom of the whole Iron Monkey thing, the Governor panics and orders his soldiers to lock up anybody who could possibly be the big I.M. (leading to a funny scene with dialogue like "You sneezed like a monkey. Now come with me").
Combining the nighttime rooftop air ballet of Crouching Tiger with the humor and physical comedy of The Three Stooges, Monkey, which is both dubbed and subtitled, has a jaw-dropping finale that takes place on the business ends of a bunch of wooden poles. And like Crouching Tiger, the film offers strong female characters (the doctor's assistant, played by Jean Wang, kicks as much ass as anybody in the film). Monkey was written by, among others, Hong Kong legend Tsui Hark, who directed four of the Once Upon a Time in China pictures. Oh, and you might not want to see Monkey on an empty stomach because there are a bunch of scenes that revolve around delicious-looking food and food preparation.
PG-13 for martial arts action/violence and brief sexuality
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