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So much average

One of my all time favorites.

A Masterpiece!

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Poor writing, pretentious, lack of resolution. The only worthwhile scene from this film is the alley fight. Reviewers lauding t his film as some sort of modern martial arts rebirth are grasping at straws.

I would say I like Xu haofeng's story,and those act in the movie.Because it's more like real. We have a saying that "martial when rich,literal when poor".As a Chinese I can feel why there is an agreement that they won't teach the student the real kungfu in the wuhang(the martial school industry) .Thouth leaders in wuhang takes it a business, the military is still not satisfied with it if it's not in its control.Only obvious with those things you can be aware of the pressing atmosphere.And for our main character,his story is be about the regular one.Aging,self-awareness,smriti,career,sort of things.Point is though got those fancy martial arts Shi is a new-comer, you cannot just break into the business.The dramatic thing is when he just be about to get into the wuhang circle Shi found out the circle is going to rot itself,then Shi began to realise what (his fake wife and apprentice) he planed to sacrifice in the first place to began his own business is what he was seeking to nurture his hollow heart.Sounds just like Aristocracy,thing of that sort. The plot is kind of cliché,but the way it develop makes it attractive.The main characters are allattractive though the dialogues are a little bit attitudinize,I think maybe the director want those for humor reasons.Well,I really like this movie, the actions are cool and chilly,the emotions touch me deeply. I don't like Bruce lee's movies and IP man.Given the idea those movies were meaning to break the stereotype of Chinese being humble and weak,I still don't like the arrogance those movies carried out.Xu Haofeng's movie gives a new feeling, it's just a story, no defending things,no mustering courage,I'm just telling you a good story.This movie makes me feel more adult things,something that more mature.I don't know ,though Bruce Lee have those water theory, mixed kungfu theory,still,in his movie, the only thing we can see is punch and kick,not bad, but we need more. This movie tells a lot things like how a master takes his apprentice a son,how a aging leader feels his weakness,and the underclass-folks' loyalty,those things are kind of peripheral in this movie but they are what this movie gradiant.

I went into this motion picture expecting more of a Kung Fu extravaganza (although the last showdown in the film was pretty bad ass). When the movie opens and the lead actor explains that he is a Wing Chun master I was totally expecting a rip off of Ip man, but with swords instead of fist. Though the movie showcases that screeching sound two swords make during signature Wing Chun blade fights this movie does not hold a candle to the Ip Man Franchise.Like Ip Man, it's both a drama and an action flick, but to both genres I felt Ip Man was far more compelling. As this movie try to do both it became unbalanced trying to sustain it. I found the drama too dry and weak to want to pay attention to it. I thought the wing Chun was just OK due to fast cuts that make it seem like the movie had no one in it who was a master of the style. In fact the whole movie seem to be cut together at a pace that makes neither genre work well for me.I did appreciate some scenes where it looked like the camera shot was paying homage to old school Kung Fu flicks and the art direction does really take you back to the 1920s, but honestly this movie moved too slow and had too much to take in to really entertain.

A screening of Haofeng Xu's latest martial art picture, his fourth feature and the fresh winner of BEST ACTION CHOREOGRAPHY in 2015 Golden Horse Awards, Haofeng, the co-screenwriter of Kar Wai Wong's THE GRANDMASTER (2013), has already manifested his unique philosophy and choreography of wushu since his shoestring budget second film THE SWORD IDENTITY (2011).Although the follow-up JUDGE ARCHER (2012) still hasn't secured a release date in mainland China, THE MASTER undoubtedly is Haofeng's most ambitious and mainstream work to date, with a more bankable cast, lead by Liao as the master Chen, a southern master of Wing Chun, arrives in Tianjin during the beginning of 20th century, trying to open his own Kung-fu school, but there are certain rules he must obey in the flourishing martial art world, he marries Zhao (Jia Song), a sultry waitress in a posh restaurant and recruits a protégé Gen (Yang Song), whom he personally trains to be his stepping stone to astonish the local schools, which is firstly governed by Master Zhen (Jin), whom Chen makes a pact with to attain his goal. But soon he is usurped by the widow Ms. Zhou (Jiang), who burns with ambition and colludes with the warlord Lin (Huang), a former pupil of Zhen, together they vainly attempt to militarise all the Kung-fu schools, whereas Gen and Chen become the last stumbling blocks in their way.What genuinely makes Haofeng's style so distinctive? Visually speaking, it is his idiosyncratic close-combat motion, the fast-moving and rapidly-editing techniques which transform combat skills from being aesthetically elegant (i.e. oriental gravity-defying jumping and flying) to something embedded with ritualistic devotion and awesome mastery, which is unsparingly efficient (sometimes even minimal) and deceivingly realistic, also, a glut of ancient Chinese weapons can maximally pique interest from viewers. On the other hand, thematically speaking, THE MASTER evokes the connotations of "anti-Kung-fu world", a rather bleak take on the conservative and fickle characteristics of these so-called martial artists, their mercenary pursuit trumps the noble idea of passing the knowledge on to their successors, Chen and Gen's master- and-apprentice relation is hinged solely on the former's personal interest, and the latter is a pawn whom he can desert without blinking his eyes, more complicated is his marriage with Zhao, and his rapport with Zhen, there is something pretty dark in Chen's motive to earn his name, yet the villainess Zhou can outsmart him in every step, for her self-seeking purpose though, only one misstep (one cannot overthrow all the formulae of a well-established genre), there is no one in her team can beat master Chen.As a Kung-fu film, THE MASTER has a surprisingly low body count (only 2 major characters die in the film), killing becomes inhuman and utterly unnecessary when paralysing your opponents is sufficient enough to soldier on relentlessly. With an unhurried open ending, the story is far from taking its curtain call while a subsequent cat-and-mouse game is shaping up, Haofeng shows his confidence of a sure-fire sequel in the future. The cast is a shade uneven while veteran players Liao, Jin and Jiang all shine with impressive presences. Still, sometimes the dialogues need a bit more fine-tuning to sound believable under certain contexts, however, one sure thing is that Haofeng Xu has stoutly emerged as one of the most aspiring director radiant with an auteurist flair presently, in the traditional Chinese Kung-fu territory, who is worthy of the admiration from a much larger scale of spectators!