Director: Kar-Wai Wong
Writer: Kar-Wai Wong, Jingzhi Zou, Haofeng Xu (Screenplay) Kar-Wai Wong (Story
Starring: Tony Leung, Ziyi Zhang, Jin Zhang
Plot: The story of martial-arts master Ip Man, the man who trained Bruce Lee.
Tagline – In Martial Arts there is no right or wrong, only the last man standing.
Runtime: 2 Hours 10 Minutes
There may be spoilers the rest of the review
Verdict: Just Watch IP Man
Story: The Grandmaster starts as we learn how the 40-year-old IP Man (Leung) life of luxury is turned upside due to the war in China, he loses everything including daughters to the effects, he moves onto Hong Kong to try to rebuild his life will being the excellent martial artists, we do follow a large amount of time in his life to get to where we do in the film.
Thoughts on The Grandmaster
Characters – IP man is the legend, arguable the greatest martial artist of all time, he trained Bruce Lee as his most famous student. This follows his life from riches, to rags and the rise of his dojo of training. We also follow Gong Er who wants to break boundaries in protecting her family’s honor and Ma San the man who uses his martial arts for evil in the world.
Performances – The performances here are fine, the fights between the different stars all click well making moments feel like edge of your seat, but after watching the IP Man I found those performances easier to connect too.
Story – The story follows the life and times of IP Man, a legend in the martial arts field, we follow decades of his life which is fine, but it has been told before in three films, which gave them more time to develop the story. it feels like we gloss over too many moments that are much bigger in this life. The story just isn’t as interesting when it gets trimmed down this much.
Action/Biopic/Romance/War – The action sequences are great fight sequences which is good to see, and they do feel brutal in effect. The biopic side of the story does seem to gloss over too much for us now we have a longer focus in the IP man films.
Settings – The settings are fine throughout the film, they do seem darker than they need to be and quite often include rain for some reason.
Scene of the Movie – Any of the fight scenes.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – The fact is that I have seen IP man films and this is the same story trimmed down.
Final Thoughts – This is a basic biopic on the IP man, you could watch the three and soon to be four films with Donnie Yen to get more in depth stories that this film covers in trimmed down time, the action won’t let you down though.
Overall: Solid enough, but not great.
Rating
