Looking for another movie based on the famous Ip Man? Well you’ve got such a movie in The Grandmaster – another opportunity for Hong Kong to milk the legacy of a normal man by blowing his life completely out of proportion with more fictional story telling!
This movie focuses on Ip Man, played by Tony Leung, but also a woman by the name Gong Er, played by Zhang Ziyi, focusing their lives during the mid 20th century. To sum it all up there’s a Grandmaster retiring who has appointed a man named Ma San as his heir in the north. After this decision he has decided that the South should have their own heir. After a few challenge matches and testing of wits, the decision is made to make Ip Man the Southern heir.
So Ip Man, keeping in contact with Gong Er (after a nice little fight between the two) plans to move his family north. But the Second Sino-Japanese War prevents him from doing so as quickly as he’d hoped. Meanwhile Ma San becomes a traitor and kills Gong Er’s father, the original Grandmaster who passed down the titles to Ma San and Ip Man.
From here we see a little bit of Ip man getting around doing his thing and the movie seems to revolve more around Gong Er’s revenge as she intends on defeating Ma San – and vows to be single and never teach again for the rest of her life.
Very Dramatic….
This movie is one of those slow moving dramas that tells a deeper story and relies less on action. That’s fine, but I do think it was disguised as an action movie and left me a little disappointed. Considering how awesome the first few Ip Man movies were, I was already starting to get over the milked Ip Man movies and this one just finished it off (although I still have to review ‘The Final Fight’ which I hope is better).
The movie definitely seems to be more about Zhang Ziyi’s character anyway, and Ip Man seems to be a less important character despite being billed as the lead. I can’t really say too many bad things about this film as it was well done as a ‘drama’. We see Gong Er basically waste her life for revenge, and throw away her family’s martial arts – which has survived generations.
It’s more of a thought provoker than an exciting action film, but what action you see isn’t too bad.
The Action & Martial Arts
We open up with a cool fight between Master Ip and a handful of opponent’s being seeing a nice fight between him and a character played the awesome Cung Le in a nice little cameo!
The rest of fights are a combination of grounded fighting with a small amount of wire work, at least until we see Ip Man fight Zhang Ziyi’s character. Then the wire work seems ridiculous. The general feel of the fights is hard hitting and fast though and they really loved the whole ‘fighting the rain’ thing, which added a nice visual element to some of the fight scenes.
The action seems to be heaviest at the beginning of the film, with the end of the film focusing on more dramatic events, but overall it’s not too bad if not a little long (2 hours 20 minutes).
The Verdict?
I could take it or leave it, it’s nothing special in my book. Some decent action mixed up with a lot of drama – check it out if you want to see for yourself but this movie won’t be leaving a mark in years to come.
On Blu Ray –
Region Free (Plays in All Countries)
THE GRANDMASTER(Blu-ray Region All)
On DVD –
Region Free (Plays in All Countries)
THE GRANDMASTER(2 Disc)(Region Free)
This movie is awesome. I learned so much about the history of China. I had not idea that kung fu was almost lost, or about the north vs. south rivalry. I am amazed that it stars an actor and a dancer, and not martial artists. Cinematography is cooler than the other movies too! And it tells the story of a female character’s life. Unique movie..stands out among the rest.