THE MASTER gets off to a great start, with Jin Tianyun (Chen Kuan Tai) being attacked in a tea house. The fight scene is great, with a little twist of its own: Jin thinks he's up against three opponents- The Three Devils-, but he's nearly fatally wounded by a fourth attacker- the owner of the tea house himself. Jin escapes by diving through a window- with the treacherous owner's knife still in him. Meanwhile, Gao (Yuen) is being mercilessly bullied at "The Decent School of Martial Arts." Gao gets reprimanded when he fights back and his suffering is compounded. When he returns home that night, Jin arrives, nearly dead, and Gao takes him in. As Jin secretly recovers (Gao would be in even deeper **** if Jin's presence were known), Gao discovers that Jin had once beaten Gao's master, Shi. Jin muses that he'll live to be 90. "How can a blind man see the future?" Gao wonders. To get money to buy medicine to help Jin, Gao goes undercover in a brothel and steals it. He is "outed" and beats a hasty retreat. When Jin has recovered enough, he confronts the pretentious Shi, but is injured again. When he flees Shi's school, he's ambushed once again by The Three Devils and killed. The 3 then decimate Shi's school and take up permanent residence. Gao becomes a waiter in a tea house. There is plenty of solid action throughout THE MASTER and it's beautifully choreographed and shot. The one and only flaw is a single reverse-action shot that stands out in my mind because it's the ONLY real flaw in the entire film. That's why I rate it a solid ten.
Review of The Master
