First Major Reversals For Iron Fist Come In "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm"

The Good: Several good performances, Moments of character, Moments of direction
The Bad: One potentially troublesome Marvel Comics allusion, Meandering plot, Unsophisticated writing for the business aspects
The Basics: Danny Rand starts to piece together the mysteries behind Rand Enterprises in "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm."


Like most Marvel Television Universe works, Iron Fist has a mystery component to it. By "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm," certain aspects of that mystery have come into focus. The villain behind everything in the first season of Daredevil (reviewed here!) has made an appearance and has been set up to be the primary adversary for Danny Rand. But Madame Gao is once again using business interests to take control of key areas in New York City and this time, it is unclear what her relationship with the apparent villain of the season is. Harold Meachum's relationship with Madame Gao becomes a bit more apparent in "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm."

"Rolling Thunder Cannon Punch" (reviewed here!) precedes "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm" and establishes the new relationships between Danny Rand and the Meachums. "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm" starts to explore the new dichotomy between Danny Rand and Joy and Ward Meachum as Rand starts to flex his muscles at Rand Enterprises. It is in "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm" that many revelations are made and Danny Rand's immaturity becomes painfully obvious. Given that "Rolling Thunder Cannon Punch" literally ended with Danny Rand being thrown out a window, it is tough to discuss "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm" without some references as to where the prior episode went!

After briefly catching himself on a security camera, Danny Rand falls to the streets of New York. He wakes up the next morning in the company of Ward and Harold Meachum. Harold tells Rand the story of his death, agreement with The Hand, and resurrection. The Hand cured Harold's death, but has kept him under their control since. Rand confesses that his training was entirely designed to defeat The Hand and he allies himself with Harold. Back at Wing's dojo, Colleen is upset that her favorite student, Darryl, filmed her cage fight and is showing the footage to her other students. Rand Enterprises publicly introduces Danny to the world as they welcome him back to the company.

Advised to take things slow by Jeri Hogarth, Danny starts to adapt to corporate life at Rand Enterprises. Rand's first act is to walk into Ward's pricing meeting on a Leishmaniasis medicine Rand Enterprises has patented and insist that the company sell the product at cost. While Ward works to distract a troublesome reporter, Colleen Wing once again goes into the ring to fight for money. While at Danny Rand's apartment, Joy is attacked by hatchetmen working for the Triads. Rand tracks the hatchetmen back to a restaurant where he meets with Yang Hai-Qing, who orchestrated the attack on Joy because of the pier deal. After coming to an agreement with the Triads, Rand sets Wing's broken (or sprained) finger before he and Joy go searching for answers. As Harold reacts to seeing Joy wounded, Danny is given a major clue in his search for the corruption within Rand Enterprises.

"Eight Diagram Dragon Palm" gets off to an excellent start as Ward Meachum takes instant responsibility for shoving Danny Rand out a window and Harold Meachum admits right away that he visited Danny Rand in the asylum. Even Danny Rand's reaction to seeing Harold is well-executed, as he turns to Ward and asks "are you seeing this, too?" For a change, people in Iron Fist ask all the right questions when confronted with new information.

The moments of corporate intrigue in "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm" are presented with an unfortunate lack of sophistication. Danny's price change on the Leishmaniasis drug seems entirely derivative of Tony Stark insisting Stark Industries not develop weapons anymore or (I know, it's a different universe, but . . .) Bruce Wayne exerting his influence at board meetings upon his return to Wayne Enterprises. But the reaction from Ward and the Rand Enterprises board is presented in monolithic terms. Danny Rand has an instant, knee-jerk reaction to hearing that the drug Rand developed is being priced at ten times its cost. Business is a negotiation and when Danny rejects that, none of the Board members try to negotiate with him. Rand has a reasonable position, but the Board could easily have made a reasonable counter-offer - double the price of the cost of each pill so that the newly-patented pill helps to cover the loss or cost of other research and development projects. Instead of profiting off the cure, Rand would at least not take a loss on developing other products and would also cover the cost of development of the newly-patented pill. Danny tries to be reasonable, but no one seems to approach him with arguments to reason with him.

David Wenham gets increased screentime in "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm" and he is very convincing as Harold Meachum. Harold begins Iron Fist as a man who is trapped in a circumstance he finds untenable and he sees Danny Rand as the tool to his freedom. Were it not for early outbursts of violence from Wenham's Harold, Harold would seem entirely like a reasonable victim, as opposed to a potential antagonist for Iron Fist. In "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm," Wenham plays Harold as measured and reasonable.

Director Miguel Sapochnik has a few fun moments in "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm," including a quick cutaway shot of Danny waving at Hogarth and her very subtle headshake to try to correct his course. Sapochnik has a decent visual sense of humor in his direction; moments after Harold Meachum takes a dig at the Illuminati, Sapoch reveals Harold's chandelier . . . which is the shape of the Illuminati symbol! Sapochnik is good at capturing very subtle performance moments from Tom Pelphrey, which helps to humanize the antagonistic Ward.

Unfortunately, Sapochnik's musical choices within "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm" are not nearly as subtle or perceptive as his visual sensibilities. The hip-hop used during Wing's training fits neither the scene, nor Colleen Wing's character up until this point. And, not all of the visual direction is great. The fight in the elevator is so dark and broken up that it does not feel like a well-executed fight sequence. Similarly, when Rand tells the Triads that he wants The Hand out of Rand Enterprises, the shot is so far back that it is not immediately clear who is delivering the line (Finn Jones does not have a very distinctive shouting voice).

Either Sapochnik or writer Scott Reynolds attempts to insert into "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm" something that is inherently problematic to the Marvel Cinematic Universe: an X-Men character. Reynolds and/or Sapochnik appear to be playing with attentive viewers and sneaking something by those who do not know the larger Marvel Comics Universe. When Colleen Wing goes into the ring, the Ringmaster announces one of the fighters as "The Duke." The Duke is wearing a black tank top and is not huge, but it is very hard for astute Marvel fans not to see the cage fighter in a black tank top and hear the name "Duke" and not at least do a double-take. In the X-Men Universe, Frank Dukes wears a virtually identical outfit and is known to fight in a similar fashion. It is hard not to believe that by bothering to name the fighter "the Duke," Reynolds and/or Sapochnik were not at least trying to make a nod in the direction of The Blob! If that is the case, Iron Fist steps into hugely problematic territory as the X-Men are an entirely separate universe from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

"Eight Diagram Dragon Palm" is an unremarkable episode of Iron Fist, which I came to realize as I tried to find a simple way to describe the plot of the episode. A lot happens in "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm," but the episode does not add up to something significant or acts as something even remotely like its own, contained story. "Danny Rand returns to work at Rand Enterprises" touches the main point of "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm," but almost all of the important action in the episode does not have to do with that. The episode comes out at average, but it feels like exactly what it is: a small piece in a larger, serialized, story.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Iron Fist - The Complete First Season, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the debut season here!
Thanks!]

For other works with Wai Ching Ho, please visit my reviews of:
".380" - Daredevil
Orange Is The New Black - Season 3
Listen Up Philip
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Keeping The Faith

5/10

For other television season and episode reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for a listing of those reviews!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Didn't I Already See A Much Better Version Of This?! Repo Men Flops!

The Good: Initial idea is not a bad one.
The Bad: The idea was recently done, Stiff acting, Excessive gore and violence.
The Basics: Hugely disappointing, Repo Men is a thriller too predictable to be thrilling set in a world where overpriced organs are violently repossessed by thuggish repo men.


I've had it with horror movies for a while, I think. Earlier this year, I went to a lot of premieres and I found myself hoping that I'm not invited to more horror flicks for a while. That feeling came on the heels of my screening Repo Men, a film which lived up to all my worst fears of what it could be based on the previews. But more than a horror film, Repo Men was a psychologically-driven thriller, somewhat like Shudder Island in terms of depth. As such, Repo Men follows in the current trend of horror movies not being particularly scary. In fact, it is almost hard to call this a horror movie at all: it's a fairly-gory action-adventure film where some upsetting things happen in between battle scenes and people running.

As for the other aspect, when I started seeing the preview trailers for Repo Men, I thought the premise looked familiar, which it did. My wife had just had me watch Repo! The Genetic Opera (click here for that review) and, as one might suspect, the concepts are remarkably close. But where Repo! The Genetic Opera earned my respect for being both stylish in its presentation, clever in its concept and surprisingly smart, Repo Men is just the opposite. This cheap gore-flick is stark and anything but artistic, clearly derivative and obvious to the point of being dumb at some key moments.

Remy is a repo man for The Union, a medical conglomerate that specializes in artificial internal organs. While he usually works free-lance, he has a de facto partner, Jake, and they repossess organs that people have failed to keep up their payments on. Unfortunately for Remy, Remy was attacked while on the job and is only alive thanks to a Union artificial heart and the terms of payment have left him unable to keep up. Not willing to rip out his own heart, Remy goes on the run as his bills mount. Left by his wife, Carol, and pressured by his boss Frank, Remy tries to put his life back together.

His search for redemption and freedom takes him to Beth and an underground of people on the run from the Union as well. As Remy becomes what he used to hunt, Jake is forced to hunt him and as the two men move toward a final showdown, Remy and Beth make desperate inroads to end the Union itself.

And I don't care. Repo Men had an unbearable lack of connection for me as a viewer that I didn't care who lived, who died and whether or not Remy had his heart ripped out or if he actually thwarted Jake. The gore comes up so quickly and with such force that it actually made me queasy. And it wasn't a good queasy, like being uncomfortable because I had witnessed something clever, but unsettling. I was nauseous because the graphic nature of the movie and how classless it was presented; it made me feel classless to sit and watch people get torn apart for The Union. There's nothing entertaining about a film where one feels ashamed to continue to sit through the screening of it!

The excessive gore is a great example of how Repo Men is more gaudy than stylish. While Repo! The Genetic Opera played with the color palate and added music to mute the gore and play with the audience, Repo Men is not so kind. Instead, it is presented with a stark color palate with fast movement and quick cuts which only accent the bloody reveals. The only positive note one might have about this is that many of the disembowelings look realistic. This is utterly unsettling, but after the first few repossessions, one begins to feel that the footage of what The Union and Remy does is more for shock value and that The Union makes artificial organs because it looks cooler to have mechanical constructs ripped out of people.

As one might suspect, Repo Men is derivative in its story as well. Based upon his novel, Eric Garcia wrote the screenplay for Repo Men with Garrett Lerner and, unfortunately, they don't seem to have a fresh idea between them. Repo Men is the cinematic equivalent of pulp, with quick reversals, people running and incredible fight scenes. The martial art of choice here is kali, which Remy employs in trying to defend himself from Jake. It's no surprise that Jake tries to get inside Remy's head by virtue of being his former partner and his use by Frank as Remy's boss is no surprise either. Repo Men follows an unfortunately formulaic plot for a chase film with its predictably timed reversals, moments where Remy must weigh his humanity versus his own survival and revelations of Jake. The movie is not terribly scary, as moments when Jake jumps out to attack are so predictable and choreographed that the audience sees them coming a mile off. And, yes, the basic idea of a massive corporation dealing in internal organs and violently repossessing them was done in Repo! The Genetic Opera.

Sadly, Repo Men does not lift arguably the best aspect of Repo! The Genetic Opera, which was that film's Shakespearean nature. Repo! The Genetic Opera is arguably a twisted rewrite of Shakespeare's King Lear and it works beautifully as that. But Repo Men is nothing so smart. It's like a rather dumb rewrite of Crank and the fast paced nature of Remy going from one incident on the run to another feels more like that than anything better.

Part of the problem, no doubt, comes from director Miguel Sapochnik, who cuts the film together like a television commercial. The fight sequences, especially, are frenetic and have the feeling of being a video game or a Mountain Dew commercial on fast forward more than cohesive or even stylish. But Sapochnik was dealt a bad hand. First, the Garcia and Lerner script lacks a protagonist who is terribly empathetic or even smart. Remy is a Repo Man, he knows how bad the terms of The Union are; he enforces them! We are meant to believe that in his hour of greatest need, The Union used him and Remy agreed because he has a son and wife he simply cannot bear to part with. What, Remy never thought ahead and made an arrangement with the Union in case of emergency? He never thought to work a health plan into his last contract negotiation?!

No and the audience doesn't expect that he would. The reason for this is that Remy is played by the chronically-stiff Jude Law. The audience comes to figure Remy never thought "Duh, gee, if I repossess all these there purdy organs, if I ever get in with th' Union, they could send someone after me!" because Law never seems terribly imaginative in the role. He is coldly brutish and unsympathetic. But what is most problematic about his performance is that he fails to sell the moments which would convince the viewer that he cares about his son and loves his wife, Carol. Law has absolutely no on-screen chemistry with Carice Van Houten and his on-screen relationship with Beth is more plot formulaic than actually chemistry or character driven.

Liev Schreiber is fairly bland and monolithic as Frank and only Forest Whitaker holds his own as Jake. But even Whitaker is not given much to work with and he soon becomes a monolithic villain as the enforcer for the Union.

Now on DVD and Blu-Ray, Repo Men arrives with an additional eight minutes of footage reinserted into the film to make it a little more edgy than the original. Bafflingly, there are still deleted scenes. The DVD also features a commentary track and commercials for The Union. There is also a featurette on the visual effects, but none of these make the film any more palatable to those who didn't enjoy the source material.

In the end, Repo Men suffers dramatically because the viewer does not care about any of the characters and the story feels like what it is; a half-rate action-adventure film trying to masquerade as original based on a simple idea that had been presented in a much better way recently.

For other, similar, films, please check out my reviews of:
Gamer
Brazil
Blade: Trinity

3/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my index page by clicking here!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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