The Grandmaster Reviews

The Grandmaster is, at its most persuasive, about the triumph of style. When Ip Man slyly asks “What’s your style?” it’s clear that Mr. Wong is asking the same question because here, as in his other films, style isn’t reducible to ravishing surfaces; it’s an expression of meaning.

Flawed but often flooring, The Grandmaster swoons with grace, feeling and elegance. With Leung and Zhang on killer form, Wong has delivered his best film in a decade.

There's no accounting for taste, I know, but the next-to-last scene between Tony Leung and ZiYi Zhang should be required for any actor. (I am a professional actor.) So much feeling and information passes between these two people without a hint of "selling"---doing nothing more than actually inhabiting the deepest feelings. It's a tour de force. Personally, I love the movie, but I can't imagine anyone walking away from such a scene and not being moved. It's hard to shake the feeling that a reviewer who called this stupid is not revealing more about themselves than they intended.

This movie is funny becuse you know some people in the cinema going to like it. That's why i love this film. it made me so happy that other liked this!

True to Wong’s style, The Grandmaster is infused with melancholy and a near-existentialist resignation to the uncertainties of fate.

Tony Leung plays Ip Man, the real-life kung fu innovator who most famously trained Bruce Lee. His life takes in the upheavals in China from the 1930s through the ’50s, including the Japanese occupation.

At the end of the day, the pesky imperative to convey information is still a driving force; more than anything Wong has ever made, the movie chokes on exposition, its more poetic concerns stifled by its surfeit of plot.

Wong’s visual grandeur is, as ever, all-encompassing.

The end result feels like only half a movie. That half -- the technical half, with Wong's stylistic flourishes and the film's lush technical elements -- is a heck of a film. The rest of The Grandmaster, however -- the storytelling -- is anything but grand.

The first 2/3 of this movie is interesting and beautiful. Then, it is Hong Kong 1952 and a flashback to 10 years earlier occurs. The movie then goes to a whole new and mesmerizing level for the final third of the film. There are many things to enjoy about this movie. Go see for yourself and enjoy the cinematography, editing, acting, action choreography, script, music and overall tone and mood of this gorgeous movie.

Visually remarkable, 'The Grandmaster' it's full of great action scenes and characters but sometimes it's a little too dragging and melodramatic.

I think Yip man role spared no one among Chinese and Hong Kong actors. For the past few years movie based on Yip man get released every year. Especially the directors and producers are very enthusiastic to make a movie about this man. They are trying to pick the story from what the earlier movies had failed or missed to tell. In such perception this is done. I am very much surprised to see this movie to get nominated for the upcoming OSCAR (2014) ceremony. Is this movie really worth for that honour, well that is why I am here to brief in this review. Truly, I am not understanding the motivation of director and writer what they wanted to tell about Yip man. It was not actually a complete Yip man story. A tale fairly balanced between a charcter called Gong Er and him with the backdrop of Sino-Japan war. Technically it was very stylish and rich, but storywise it is a vastly letdown. When movies are based on someone's real life, filmmakers can change a few things to suit cinematically. That means they should not bore the audience with unimpressive and uninspiring scenes. Yeah, I did not find one single portion of the movie that attracted me. They showed stories that happened between 1930 to 1972. Over 40 years of span in the movie what I saw was the pieces of stories without exciting ones. Honestly, I think Donnie Yen's 'Ip Man' movie series were the best so far. The American Academy Award people had failed to grab those golden opportunities and now they are holding this movie's tail. Without any doubt Danish drama 'The Hunt' going to win the OSCAR and soon everyone will forget this movie.

The fight scenes are good, as well as the directing in these particular scenes. I also enjoyed the soundtrack. The acting by the main cast is good enough. However, the directing in the rest of the scenes is a little annoying. Kar Wai Wong did the same thing in another movie i saw by him: My Blueberry Nights. Never understood it really. The story is a complete mess. I don't know who's story this is. It's also too slow-paced, stretched over 2 hours. So i was extremely bored. And i had a very hard time understanding what was happening. The movie is in Chinese; and since they talk really fast, the English subtitles disappear very quickly. So aside from the action sequences, and maybe the last few somewhat emotional scenes, where the two leads meet one last time, i didn't enjoy this film at all.

Rains drops shine like diamonds. A choreographed battle becomes a dance of graceful, powerful movement. The violence becomes beautiful. With this incredible fight scene director Kar Wai Wong opens The Grandmaster. Then Wong replicates the same techniques over and over again, ad nauseam, expecting fancy camera angles and beautiful set designs to carry an entire 90-minute feature. The result, a film where absolutely nothing happens. Phillipe le Sourd’s cinematography here resembles that of Christopher Doyle’s in Hero (2002). That is to say, it’s amazing, but just in case we didn’t recognize its amazingness in the first scene, the second scene, or even the tenth, scene Director Wong insists we better recognize. Wong pummels the viewer with le Sourd’s blazing techniques. Identical shot after identical shot render le Sourd’s imagery utterly meaningless. This film stars the great of Zizi Zhang of Crouching Tiger (2000) and Hero fame. Here she plays a supporting character, and, oh yeah, is totally wasted as an actress. The disorganized mess of direction spends more time showing slow motion side angles of her pretty face than probably any other single device in the film. Zhang’s combat is graceful as always, but this gets boring fast as there is no discernable purpose to all her fighting. The main character Ip Man flees whatever Chinese town he’s from as the crisis of a Japanese invasion occurs, but we don’t even care. Eventually Zhang’s character and Ip Man magically meet up in Hong Kong, but by this point, thanks to the miasmic mess that has spewed fourth since the beginning of the film, the only think we do care about as viewers is the amount of time left until the credits roll.

Hong Kong Film Awards

• 12 Wins & 14 Nominations

Golden Horse Film Festival

• 6 Wins & 12 Nominations