The Grandmasters has too many soft spoken words, too many slow camera movements, too many close-ups, too many backsides of actors, too many shadows, too many blurred vision and most horrifyingly, too little action. I didn't get the full grasp of the story as it leaps through time and characters and was bewildered by its lack of coherence. The precious few action scenes are good, but oh boy oh boy, what are they fighting about?? For me, Wong Kar Wai's direction for the story of Yip Man, is all wrong. Yes, it can be artistic, yes it can have visuals so gloomy and shadowy its hard to make out what we are seeing. But wouldn't it helped if all these were, you know, engaging and entertaining?
To be sure, Tony Leung makes a fantastic Yip Man. Better than Donnie Yen's version, Leung has a charisma and laconic charm with the character. One glance at his eyes, I'm drawn into this man. So imagine my pity as the film never gives chance for him to really act nor really fight until he runs out of breath. It's all so suave, all so elegant and all knowing. The dramatic high point for the acting is during the hard times, but it passes on quite quickly because the film has more uninteresting things to throw at us. It certainly takes a different direction to Donnie Yen's Yip Man series, and its for the worse. Instead of making sensible situations for the hand-to-hand combat, Yip Man here searches for the mysterious legendary martial arts moves only Ziyi Zhang knows. And the two characters have love affair of sorts despite Yip Man already having a wife. All this heavy focus on martial arts gets me to wonder, are there still modern day audiences for this film who knows all the ancient/traditional martial arts moves and feel compassionate towards them to actually care for it?
One merciful element was its choice not to concentrate on Yip Man beating up Japanese soldiers in an overly dramatic fights. Although this saps the film of its possible actions, compared with the government propaganda scene in recent Chinese action films, in which the baddies are almost always Japanese soldiers and/or Whites, the film doesn't put much focus on Japanese invasion. Just the period itself. But I guess with a film this dull and light on action scenes, a few clobbering of Japanese soldiers could have been fine.
Wong's direction has no sense of fun, and its all gloom. The actors do what they can, but the script they are given didn't tick my interest. I really looked forward to this film, interested to see Wong's take on the legendary Kung Fu master, but I guess his interest in him differed with mine.
To be sure, Tony Leung makes a fantastic Yip Man. Better than Donnie Yen's version, Leung has a charisma and laconic charm with the character. One glance at his eyes, I'm drawn into this man. So imagine my pity as the film never gives chance for him to really act nor really fight until he runs out of breath. It's all so suave, all so elegant and all knowing. The dramatic high point for the acting is during the hard times, but it passes on quite quickly because the film has more uninteresting things to throw at us. It certainly takes a different direction to Donnie Yen's Yip Man series, and its for the worse. Instead of making sensible situations for the hand-to-hand combat, Yip Man here searches for the mysterious legendary martial arts moves only Ziyi Zhang knows. And the two characters have love affair of sorts despite Yip Man already having a wife. All this heavy focus on martial arts gets me to wonder, are there still modern day audiences for this film who knows all the ancient/traditional martial arts moves and feel compassionate towards them to actually care for it?
One merciful element was its choice not to concentrate on Yip Man beating up Japanese soldiers in an overly dramatic fights. Although this saps the film of its possible actions, compared with the government propaganda scene in recent Chinese action films, in which the baddies are almost always Japanese soldiers and/or Whites, the film doesn't put much focus on Japanese invasion. Just the period itself. But I guess with a film this dull and light on action scenes, a few clobbering of Japanese soldiers could have been fine.
Wong's direction has no sense of fun, and its all gloom. The actors do what they can, but the script they are given didn't tick my interest. I really looked forward to this film, interested to see Wong's take on the legendary Kung Fu master, but I guess his interest in him differed with mine.