Review of The Grandmaster (2013) by Josheyre — 02 Sep 2013

I was expecting a lot more with, both, the critic and user reviews, but people are obviously still drawing some smokey parallels between the artistry, of both film and story, of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" to "movies" like "The Grandmaster".

Let's just say that "The Grandmaster" is stuffed full of slow motion kung fu choreography and long glances between Ip Man and Lady Gong, but it's less of a film than empty kung fu porn interspersed with a vignette of family revenge.

Ip Man isn't really a character in this movie, but an avatar to join the kung fu porn from scene to scene. Then he disappears for nearly half of the movie so Lady Gong can do her thing. So, calling this movie "The Grandmaster" is problematic, because the only coherent story in this film isn't really about Ip Man, or even the Old Grand Master, but his daughter rescuing the honor of her family from the punk who her father, the old Grand Master, gave his fighting legacy to.

Ip Man's story in the movie is so lightweight, that it feels secondary, if even a story at all. In the end, you leave wondering what the point of the movie was at all. Now, movies don't always have to have some super precise and epic story, but we are supposed to care about the path that Ip Man took to Grandmaster, at least that's what I thought was the point, and the writers spent barely any part of the movie telling that story in anywhere near an effective manner.

Ip Man was underdeveloped. The love story was underdeveloped. The history was not woven into the story effectively. I love artistically executed films, but Wong Kar Wai has become a master of style over substance.

This movie tries to do 2 things that could have their own story, one of Ip Man's path to Hong Kong, and the other of Lady Gong's quest to recover her father's legacy. It only tells one of these stories decently (Gong's) and the other it completely fails.

So, we basically have a 2 hour movie with about 30 minutes that really grabs you. This is not a good movie. Don't let the decent score fool you. Everyone who I went to see the movie with agreed... If you want to see a movie about Ip Man, see "Ip Man".

If you want to see a beautiful kung fu movie, see "Crouching Tiger". "The Grandmaster" is chaff.