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The Grandmaster Movie Review

The Grandmaster is a 2013 Hong Kong-Chinese martial arts drama film directed by Wong Kar-wai and starring Tony Leung. It’s a solid, but disappointing flick.

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“Every great age presents a choice:

to go forward, or stay back.

I prefer to stay back,

in the happiest times of my life“

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The film is about martial-arts master Ip Man, the man who trained Bruce Lee. He is a very famous figure from this country, but he got a better movie in the previous decade’s ‘Ip Man’. That film beat this film to a punch as it was released five years before. The Grandmaster was in development much longer, but its production was tumultuous, so it came out very late.

And that was one of the big problems here as it was quickly overshadowed by that previous much more memorable and enjoyable movie. Another issue here is the storytelling overall, which was slight and the movie was horribly paced and a total mess in that regard, and that all made it very difficult to get invested in properly.

It does develop the female characters very well and is actually quite commendable in that department. Uniformly, the character development and the acting are both excellent. The highlight is naturally Tony Leung as Ip Man himself. He was very well cast and he excelled as he usually does. He’s a great actor and he made the man in question more interesting due to his committed performance.

The Grandmaster is also very strong in the martial arts action scenes. Some of the fights are genuinely terrific and brilliant even. They have style to spare, plus they are fun to follow. The mixing of the action and drama elements worked in the film’s favor, but it’s a shame that the dramatic department was somewhat rushed.

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Visually speaking, this is another one of this director’s stunning features. The fight choreography is splendid, the photography is beautiful and the score is also quite good. Still though, Wong Kar-wai has made much better films, leading to this one being among his weaker efforts. But even his weaker flick constitutes a solid feature as he is that amazing of a director.