Alright, The Grandmaster is a film that many of you may not have heard of. It is based off of a “True story”. Ever heard of Ip Man? Well, he’s Bruce Lee’s teacher and apparently he was extremely tough. The film likely exaggerated his strength, but that was the fun part, so we should definitely let it slide. Usually films that are based off of real life are pretty awful, but since this one is action oriented, maybe that won’t hold true.

The Grandmaster starts off with an ambitious beginning. Ip Man has a big fight against a group of warriors and he skillfully makes short work of them. All of his opponents go down pretty quickly except for one warrior who manages to put up some resistance. There is never a question of who will win the battle, but I’m glad that at least one warrior tried to do something. The whole scene was very cool, but there was one problem with it….This scene completely destroyed the rest of the film. Sometimes, you should try not to start out so epic. This is one of those rare occasions. The problem is that the rest of the film doesn’t feature an abundance of fights and the ones that came up were cool…just not quite as cool. The first scene set the tone, but the rest of the film just dropped it.

The film stayed at a solid level for a while as Ip Man becomes the representative for the South. He faced various martial artists of the South who used different fighting styles, but Ip Man proved to be much better than the others. The fights did make for some pretty epic scenes. One of his opponents mixed different fighting styles together, which is a pretty good way to fight. Ip Man’s form of Kung Fu only uses three different signs, but they are sufficient to win battles.

Ip Man also took on Gong Er. She was a pretty skilled fighter and the first to “Defeat” Ip Man. It was decided that whoever broke a piece of furniture first, would be the loser. At one point Ip Man tries to save Gong Er, but she didn’t need his help and that’s what led to his downfall. With the exception of one scene, this was where the movie deteriorated quickly. Ip Man left the country and wars broke out. People died and the audience felt like snoozing.

Luckily, we still had one fight scene left (2 If you count Ip Man’s fight for the teaching position). Gong Er challenged Ma San to avenge her father. Ma San is a pretty skilled warrior and he was known as the strongest in the North. It’s a shame that he never got to challenge Ip Man. Gong Er and Ma San have a pretty solid fight and they both give it their all. The loser is humbled and the victor goes away feeling triumphant. After such a fight, I would expect nothing less!

The film should have ended there, but we get another half-hour of people talking, people dying, and people talking some more. You start to wonder what happened to Ip Man. Towards the end of the film, he vanished for a while and stopped being the main character. Gong Er replaced him in that regard and we got to see a little of her past. Gong Er and Ip Man were definitely the best main characters of the film. (Though I suppose that is not saying much.) Gong Er stayed strong to her vows and Ip Man beat up as many people as he could.

The Grandmaster is a film that suffered greatly from its length and lack of interesting characters. Had the film been cut down to around 70 minutes plus add some more fight scenes, this could have been one of the better films of 2013. I can’t say that I highly recommend this film, but if you like documentaries, then you should enjoy it. If you are willing to spend some money to see a good fight scene, you can also just come in and check the first few minutes. Of course, if you want a movie with real hand to hand fight scenes, check out Tekken Blood Vengeance!

Overall 3/10