Man of Tai Chi

Click on the post title if you want more info on the movie.  Anyway, I watched Man of Tai Chi a couple of days ago, and I wasn't really impressed.  The whole thing just came across as really wonky and simplistic.  Even the mystical Oriental-style gibberish about innocence and meditation and the purpose of martial arts was appallingly heavy-handed which kind of goes against the whole point of Oriental mysticism since it's supposed to be, you know, SUBTLE.

The fights were okay, I guess, but they were all set duels in arenas so there wasn't a whole lot interesting going on besides a ton of punching and kicking.  Don't get me wrong, the fight choreography was good (as you'd expect from Yuen Woo Ping) it just wasn't particularly interesting.

Keanu Reeves also played the villain and displayed more of his classic nonexistent acting ability.  He also looks really old and oddly decrepit in this film, which made the end fight between him and the hero look, well, dumb.  The only really interesting fight in the entire movie is the one between the protagonist and his master, but they didn't really make much out of it.

All in all, "Man of Tai Chi" comes across more as an intentionally corny "how to produce a martial arts movie" demo than a real movie.