Various Artists
"The Man with the Iron Fists" (CD)

Imagine the meeting: a member of the Wu-Tang clan comes to you and describes a film starring himself living in a turn-of-the-century Chinese village where he must learn to Kung Fu against the evil families with the help of an Australian cowboy.  All set to a soulful set of old-school hip hop.

Who wouldn't sign on for that? Well, no one, apparently.  With co-writing credit to Eli Roth and production credit from Quentin Tarantino, this film knows its audience and went after it with as much grace and finesse as it could muster.

The film itself is far from great, but who really could've expected that? No, what you did expect, however, was fun Kung Fu fight scenes set to bumpin' hip hop.  And that you get. Sort of.

In the film there is a heap of music that has been tweaked for it's own purposes.  A perfect example is the opening credit's use of the Wu-Tang's "Shame on the Nigga" which gets a Far East makeover and is a great asset to the film.  Sadly, that track isn't included on this soundtrack.

I'll never quite understand how so much of the most memorable music in a film can be excluded from the official soundtrack, but once again, I would say this is a compilation that falls far short of it's potential.