Review of The Grandmaster (2013) by Troianman — 06 Sep 2013

I enjoyed this movie a great deal. Though it should be stated up front that this particular movie is in a very different style than the previous movie depicting the life of Ip Man, and that it takes a few liberties with his story for the sake of a major portion of the plot.

The majority of fight scenes were choreographed as if two opponents were dancing on a stage and just as beautiful to watch. The pacing might be a bit slow for some audiences but lets be honest, that isn't the audience this movie is going for with its incredibly artful approach and major emphasis on story instead of just endless fights for no reason so the pacing argument doesn't really hold much weight.

Virtually the only complaint I had after walking out of the theater was that there were some scenes which seemed unfinished or like something else was meant to be there but was obviously not. After looking into this I quickly discovered that it is because there was actually something else there in other versions. American audiences are receiving a version that is about 20 minutes shorter than the cut shown to other audiences and that 20 minutes is all story that is missing. So while the version in America suffers from unfortunate editing it seems that the full version/director's cut/international version/whatever you want to call it likely does not. Of course the only way to confirm this will be to wait until the DVD/Blu-Ray release which will hopefully be a director's cut. Even without those 20 minutes it is incredibly satisfying to watch and I would completely recommend this movie to anybody even remotely interested.