Rains drops that 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 that we better recognize. Wong pummels the viewer to death 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.
3/10
