Review of The Grandmaster (2013) by Tim M — 30 Mar 2014

This is definitely a kung fu film done by an art house filmmaker. Just the way everything is shot, even the choreography of the fights itself, feels like a product of one person's vision and ideas, without any creative interference from anyone else.

The film is absolutely beautiful to look at and the fight sequences themselves feel more like very tightly choreographed dance sequences. That might sound like a negative to some people, but I found it to be a positive.

There's this dance-like quality to the moves and how they go back and forth, it feels very much like a dance and I found these scenes to be beautifully choreographed. It's a shame, however, that the film has absolutely no story to speak of.

Yes, there's hints of it here and there. There's themes of loyalty, adapting with the times versus staying in the past, the importance of family, etc. But this does not tell a coherent story. These would all be great themes in a more tightly-scripted story.

The fact of the matter is that the film goes all over the place and, for the most part, it feels like the story is just there to get you to the next fight scene. The story definitely takes a backseat to the visuals and to the fight sequences themselves, and in some ways it succeeds as I did find the film to be pretty good.

But this isn't better, or more compelling, than the two Ip Man films that Donnie Yen did. It's certainly more artistic than those two films I've mentioned, but it's not even close to better.

While I'm sure the first Ip Man, because the second one is like Rocky 4 in a kung fu setting, has its heavily dramatized moments it feels like a proper film about the man's life. This film doesn't really do much of that and, hell, by the end, the film is more about Gong Er's relationship with her father and her desire to keep her family's legacy in the right hands.

I thought this was, actually, among the better parts of the film's story as the real heroine of the film happens to be Gong Er and not Ip Man himself. And I thought that was a nice little twist to the story.

But if that was the endgame, then the film should've focused more on Gong Er instead of Ip Man. That's why I think the films Donnie Yen did are so much better. There's also some really corny dialogue after the last fight between Gong Er and Yutian about how Gong and Ip were fated to meet each other, etc, etc.

So this is definitely a film with flaws, all of them in the story direction, but I still think the film offers enough beautifully choreographed action scenes and incredible visuals to make this at least a good film.

It's not something I would recommend, but it is a solid film nonetheless.