source: mr-reeves.com

There is always a subtlety in telling a story, with Keanu Reeves, no matter if he does it as an actor or as a director. Being insightful (astute/sharp) while still remaining simple, this is the strength of Reeves.

[...]

With a very clever sense of humor, the actor answered not always easy questions from the fans. Both films are very telling/meaningful, just like the behavior of Reeves is very meaningful, talking without a lot of words, but with an unusual expressivity.

(the above can be translated much better, but my French is rusty, so any native French speakers here are welcome to correct it :) )

Man of Tai Chi is a relatively small and unambitious movie, but it's satisfying as all hell—an old story, beautifully told. It has a few great punch-the-air moments, and it's got some of the best straight-ahead fight scenes I've seen in American or Asian action movies in the last few years. Moreover, the mere fact that it exists feels like a minor miracle. Keanu Reeves, fight-movie auteur! Who knew? Who could've possibly known?

We knew ;)

We always knew he had it in him ;)

A film that conversely received less credit than it deserved was Keanu Reeves’s directorial debut Man of Tai Chi (Wednesday, 10.25pm, Premiere). The general ignorance about tai chi’s martial heritage, and its popular association with elderly Chinese people in parks, probably had a lot to do with it.

It stars Reeve’s martial arts teacher and friend Tiger Chen in a conventional narrative about a martial arts student who is too impatient to follow the teachings of his elderly master and gets involved in an underground fighting ring, the setting for some truly memorable fight sequences.

Reeves plays its convener, Donaka Mark, a totally menacing and unredeemable character — kudos to him for taking the role on.

Man of Tai Chi (MA15+)

3.5 stars

Wednesday, 10.25pm, Premiere

http://thevulgarcinema.com/2015/05/balance-motion-keanu-reeves-man-of-tai-chi/

Excellent first film by "Director" Keanu Reeves.

Author: skot-21 from United States
25 December 2013
Personally I found this movie to be excellent! Here's why. Growing up In the late 70', early 80's I watched just about every Martial Arts movie I could get my hands on. I've seen the full spectrum of awful to awesome that this genres has to offer.

2 things immediately got my attention, the first was how much the film reminded me of the films I grew up on. Not from a plot or story stand point, but from a cinematic and general vibe. It felt like the martial arts films from my childhood. It felt like a seasoned Hong Kong martial arts director had made this picture. It felt like an authentic martial arts classic action film with some modern touches. Authentic, not just someone trying to copy one. That was impressive to me pretty much immediately.

The second thing was, Keanu Reeves. I found myself wondering, "Why the Hell is Keanu in this? It's not a huge Hollywood film and why on earth is he playing the bad guy?" I'm not a fan of Keanu, I don't hate him or anything like that, but I don't rush out to see his latest film ether. He's just another actor to me. When the end credits rolled, I was shocked he had directed it, I had no idea. I was impressed to say the least, so much so I checked IMDb to see if he had ever directed anything else. I was shocked again to see this was his first directorial effort! Hands down, in my opinion, Man of Tai Chi is the most impressive first full length directorial effort since Neill Blomkamp's District 9. Keep in mind Blomkamp had directed many shorts before that, so he had a huge leg up on Reeves.

People are ether going to love or hate this movie, it comes down to 2 things, knowledge and expectations. Man of Tai Chi isn't the Matrix, it ain't Crouching Tiger. It's a solid first directorial effort by Keanu Reeves that shows a long standing love/understanding for the martial arts films both he and I grew up watching.

I may not be a fan of Keanu as an actor, but I'm excited to see what his next directs effort will be.

Final Thoughts

The movie remains a fun, kick-ass fight flick, but the commentary is very much a mixed bag. Reeves and Chen leave a lot of dead air as they settle in and just watch instead of chatting, and when they do talk a lot of it is Reeves saying something and Chen simply repeating it. The director acknowledges the various contributors - performers, choreographers, production designers, etc - but neither of them offer much in the way of anecdotes from the filming. All of that said though, Reeves is a quietly funny guy. He shares brief, almost poetic whispers related in some way (probably?) to the action onscreen, and they're entertaining in their own right as he's essentially narrating his own zen-filled thoughts.

Hey, you seem interested in this based off the promise of the action alone, which means we both love action movies. But, why? It's not just that action is "cool," because otherwise we'd just just be watching random clips of it YouTube. What we like is movies, the action as part of a story. As I'm sure you, fellow action aficionado, would agree, from something as simple as Dredd 3D's use of weirdly stylized violence to build out its dystopian world, to our-angel-who-walks-the-earth Keanu Reeves' directorial debut Man of Tai Chi, where evolving fighting styles are a manifestation of the characters emotional states, where kicks and punches tell the story like lines of dialogue, good looking action is a hundred times more impactful when you actually care about the people involved.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/ManOfTaiChi

And Parker set his vision for that look early on for everyone to see. “Nate is an intense person as most actors are. He took his directorial responsibilities very seriously,” assessed Davis. “He had a whole wall filled with still captures from different films including Valhalla Rising [shot by Morten Soberg], The Assassination of Jesse James According by the Coward Robert Ford [shot by Roger Deakins], Man of Tai Chi and The Iron Lady [both lensed by Davis]. When you looked at all those images together, they looked like one movie. Nate invited anybody on the crew who had any visual responsibility to take a look at that board.”

[...]

In staffing up for The Birth of a Nation, Davis pushed hard for an additional crew member: an on-set colorist. Davis affirmed that the DI is critical to creating the emotional look of the film. He strives to establish that look as soon as possible so that it is planted firmly in everyone’s mind at the dailies stage. Steven Sherrick was the on-set colorist hired for The Birth of a Nation. All the takes were color graded by Sherrick so they would be available for the Avid edit. And after each day of shooting, Davis would get together with Sherrick in the color suite for an additional hour or two. This was instrumental in helping to realize the look envisioned by Parker. “Files were generated so that Nate could see dailies on his iPad and the work could go into Avid the way he wanted,” explained Davis. “Nate essentially had a timed movie--not perfectly but a lot better timed movie than most in Hollywood at that stage. He was able to cut out of the Avid to show his work to investors. The scenes looked phenomenal which instilled confidence in investors. He was able to raise money that way.”

This method of working was initiated by Davis on the alluded to Man of Tai Chi directed by Keanu Reeves. Deploying the then just introduced Alexa Studio camera package, the movie, said Davis, was the first to shoot full-resolution ArriRaw with anamorphic lenses utilizing the camera’s 4:3 sensor. To handle all the data, DIT Michael Taylor was brought into the project along with a colorist to do on-set dailies. Color-corrected dailies could be accessed by Reeves on an iPad, and Davis has continued that technique in all of his digital movies ever since.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/world/asia/mma-martial-arts-china-tai-chi.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=2

The earlier link higher upthread was broken; was it this one?
https://filmschoolrejects.com/19-things-we-learned-from-keanu-reeves-man-of-tai-chi-commentary-645a96558930/

"The scene where Gong (Brian Siswojo) drives Tiger to the tournament features a song from Siswojo’s own band. Reeves liked the idea of an actor playing a character who’s singing along to a song by the actor."

The Keanuspawn need to discover Dogstar. :D

the nytimes link works for me :|
here's a permalink, hope this works.
https://nyti.ms/2pxxA15
or this
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/world/asia/mma-martial-arts-china-tai-chi.html
it's about a real tournament like the one Tiger fights in the movie, only in 'real life' it doesn't go well for the Tai Chi guy. The public's reaction is pretty much like in the movie, though. They condemn the violence.

I wonder how Tiger would fare against that MMA guy, though.

(I'd also like to see Neo vs Donaka, just because it would be awesome.)