'The Man With the Iron Fists' red-band trailer

Okay, we got a little too excited when coming up with the above headline. But the red-band clip for The Man With the Iron Fists — a chop-sockey epic starring Russell Crowe, Lucy Liu, and RZA that also marks the Wu-Tang Clan rapper's directorial debut — really does have everything you want from a trailer. If, that is, what you want from a trailer is lashings of martial arts mayhem, an ornamental fan whose ornaments are an array of knives, the line "Power belongs to no one until it is seized through sex and violence," wrestler Dave Batista turning into brass, Crowe sporting some of the most excellent facial fuzz this side of a Frank Zappa impersonators' convention, and the sight of RZA himself not only breaking an anvil with one of his big ol' iron fists but also, literally, punching someone's eye out.

When a still from the last scene hit the Internet a couple of days back, one of the writers at slashfilm.com noted that it reminded him of the eye-popping scene in Evil Dead II. But this trailer puts me in mind of a different Sam Raimi movie, The Quick and the Dead — partly because of the participation of Crowe and partly because, like Raimi's berserk Western, the result looks to be utterly and — we hope — wonderfully bonkers.

The Man With the Iron Fists, which RZA wrote with Hostel director Eli Roth and is being "presented" by Quentin Tarantino, will be released this fall. You can check out the trailer below.

Read more:

• RZA on joining forces with Bob Odenkirk in the action movie Nobody
• Sophia Chang talks being The Baddest Bitch in the Room, and working with Wu-Tang Clan
• RZA trades in Method Man for Cinderella Man, snagging Russell Crowe for kung fu film