Wong Kar-Wai delivers an emotional, but explosive, love letter to the master of Wing Chun. Abundant slow motion and elegant close-ups regale a tale spanning decades in China and Hong Kong, but all that is just window dressing for poor scripting and a turgid narrative.

Premiering at Berlin in 2013, an overextended wait for UK release finally burgeoned forth a butchered cut of the original film. Reeking of early 2000’s Crouching Tiger and Zhang Yimou’s Hero, The Grandmaster is less a masterpiece of Kung Fu and more an unnecessary attempt at reclaiming the rose tint of classic Martial Arts films.

The original cut of The Grandmaster was a spectacular (albeit unnecessarily long in production) action movie, however The Weinstein Brothers’ strike again with their remorseless butchering ‘Western’ film cuts.

RATING: 3/5

INFORMATION

CAST: Tony Chiu Wai Leung, Ziyi Zhang, Jin Zhang 

DIRECTOR: Wong Kar-Wai

WRITER: Wong Kar-Wai

SYNOPSIS: The story of martial-arts master Ip Man, the man who trained Bruce Lee.