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100Where it really counts, though, it's the same good old comic action fantasy.
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88This superficial plot, almost devoid of characterization or weighty emotions, is an excuse for ferocious, fast and frequent combat.
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75Basically aimed at audiences who want elaborate fight sequences and fidget at the dialogue in between. It's for the fans, not the crossover audience.
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75The creative vigor of its originality, distilled in a pure and unadulterated form, is simply exhilarating.
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75It's indescribable fun.
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75A long-on-video 1993 release now restored to its original Cantonese with different music and more audio pop.
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63The requisite set piece, which will remind you of the treetop sequence in "Crouching Tiger," involves a fight atop a forest of burning poles, exactly the kind of thing you want in a movie like this.
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100Despite my ignorance of Hong Kong, I'm convinced that Iron Monkey could be the best, most entertaining martial arts film I may ever see.
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60Martial arts spectacles don't come more spectacular than this, and Yuen bestows a quality of grace on the entire production.
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83Gravity-defying kung fu choreography.
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83Lacks the poetic and romantic resonance of "Crouching Tiger," but it's got kicks aplenty -- of both the physical and the sensational kind -- and it lands them again and again.
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90If Asian martial arts movies interest you even a little bit, you're going to want to see Iron Monkey. Not only that, you're going to want to see it more than once.
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90A rollicking, comic-book Robin Hood plot and more furiously entertaining fight scenes than the ones in Ang Lee's solemn martial-arts art movie.
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90It's funny, heroic, exaggerated and, most of all, energetic; the film speeds along as though afraid to lose the audience's attention for even a moment.
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80A guilt-free, no-fat dessert from start to finish.
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80Saving the big number for the climax, like any good musical director, Mr. Yuen finishes up with a spectacular variation on the traditional kung fu pole fight.
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80Not only visually brilliant, it's funny, too.
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80Scenes of ingenious slapstick violence.
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70A pure font of high-flying kung fu artistry, the likes of which has since transformed the way Hollywood's good guys and bad kick the crap out of one another.
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60Anyone expecting the decorous serenity of the Ang Lee film should be aware that Iron Monkey strives for no more or less than comic-strip thwack and thump.
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88The characters may be speaking Chinese, but such rousing entertainment needs no translation.
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88Viewers impressed by the fairly standard martial-arts action of "Crouching Tiger" will really be wowed after seeing this film.
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75They're as special as special effects get.
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63No "Crouching Tiger." It lacks the richness of theme and performance that made Ang Lee's film so emotionally satisfying. In fact, watching Iron Monkey makes you realize just how Western and literary the sensibility of "Crouching Tiger" was.
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80High drama this ain't. And yet, anyone looking for a hearty banquet of gymnastic, kung-fu tomfoolery won't walk away hungry.
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58The movie is never engaging on anything but a superficial level, and it gradually gets decidedly tiresome.
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90Now the movie can be seen for what it was all along, remarkable by any standards.
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70Showcases its cast's athleticism and Ping's kinetic high-wire artistry. But unlike similar Western-made fare, it doesn't take itself seriously.
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