Keanu Reeves' feature film directorial debut, Man of Tai Chi is a film seriously focused on martial arts, which was "partly inspired by the life of Reeves' friend, stuntman Tiger Chen," according to Wikipedia. The film is a combination of brilliantly depicted combat scene's and poor acting/dialogues. I expected more from an experienced actor such as Keanu Reeves in his first directing job.
Story of this film evolve around Tiger Chen, a martial arts student and his struggle to provide his family, while he try to master Tai Chi. Chen proves to be a good student to his master, until Keanu Reeves, who play the villain Donaka Mark sees his talents. Mark then carefully lays a trap to force Chen to work for him as a fighter in a dangerous illegal competition where participants has to take part in a fight to death. Chen enters the competition with no other option to save his master's temple and slowly begins to go beyond what he learned and starts to alter traditional techniques of Tai Chi. This leads Chen to get more obsessed over money and lose focus on his true purpose.
Action sequences and fights have been brilliantly performed in the film. They were very original and as real as it could ever get. Some long shots of combat scenes actually amazed me, specially of the talents of this thin, tiny man. However, when talking about Keanu Reeves' part in the film, he fails in certain aspects like visualizing the script and adding dramatic effects to character dialogues, which most of the time turned out be utter ridiculous words. It's one of the most disappointing parts of the film, given it was almost entirely consist of Chinese language.
Overall, Man of Tai Chi is a very entertaining film that will keep you on the edge with great action. However, it all depends on how much bad you can tolerate throughout its' 105 minute runtime.
Man of Tai Chi was released in China in July 2013 and for VOD on September 27th, before it came over to theaters in the U.S. on November 1st.
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