Review of The Grandmaster (2013) by Davin G — 06 Sep 2013

Legendary director Kar Wai Wong's The Grandmaster tries so hard to be poetry on film, but instead ends up disjointed and lackluster, riddled with horribly out of place dialogue and unnecessarily long tangents.

I could've lived with all of that if it wasn't for Kai Wai Wong's butchering of Yuen Woo Ping's (arguably the best fight coordinator ever) sequences. Wong decides that it would be best if half the fight sequences were shot in slow motion and the other half so zoomed in that you can't even tell who is who.

I have no doubt that Ping's fights would've been incredible to watch, but the way they were filmed took nearly everything away from them. The fights in the Ip Man series are exponentially more entertaining and impressive than these.

With all of that said, there was a lot to like in The Grandmaster. There were shimmers of genius throughout and the acting was phenomenal, but it just fell short for me on almost every level. I think I was so disappointed because I was comparing this film to the poetic masterpiece that was Yimou Zhang's Hero, which I'll argue for days is the single most beautiful movie ever captured on camera.

It felt like The Grandmaster wanted to have the same feel as Hero, but couldn't maintain a consistent tempo. Also, the first thirty minutes of the movie were basically an instructional video on the basics of different styles of Kung Fu.

It generated the awkward pacing that continued throughout. Bottom line, this movie is entertaining as well as informative, but as a complete, coherent film, it's lacking. I'd recommend it to Ip Man fans and chinese film enthusiasts, but other than that, you should probably pass.