Ip Man's peaceful life in Foshan changes after Gong Yutian seeks an heir for his family in Southern China. Ip Man then meets Gong Er who challenges him for the sake of regaining her family's honor. After the Second Sino-Japanese War, Ip Man moves to Hong Kong and struggles to provide for his family. In the mean time, Gong Er chooses the path of vengeance after her father was killed by Ma San. The story of martial-arts master Ip Man, the man who trained Bruce Lee. I just want to comment about the spar between Ip Man and Gong Er. The fight was whoever broke a furniture loses. Throughout the fight Ip Man has the upper hand over Gong Er and took it easy on her. Gong Er struggled to keep up the fight and sustained a few knocks on the way. Ip was a far superior fighter than Gong, you could say Ip was using 50% of his skill while Gong is putting 100% and maybe a bit more than what she is capable of into it. At the climax of the fight Ip Man threw Gong Er off the stairs and out of sincerity, love, pity or whatever, Ip decide to rescue Gong Er from falling to oblivion by taking hold of her hand and dragging her back up. A result of being saved Gong Er is rewarded with an advantage and reacted by pushing Ip Man's hand away in which Ip willingly conceded the fight by landing on a table and breaking it. Gong Er accepted victory perhaps as a face saving way of the alternative to a defeat which is sure to happen if Ip hadn't conceded. Her respect and friendship to Ip blossomed in acknowledgement that he is the better fighter. Someone actually started snoring in the theater but when I looked over my shoulder they stopped so I guess they were joking around and after I realized that I thought they had clever timing… unlike this movie. I've seen the other Ip Man movies and if in fact his existence did occur than he had a rather un-illustrious second half to his life which this movie portrays.<br/><br/>Love lost and love undiscovered in a country that historically favors separation,there isn't a lot of pity for the key players by the audience.<br/><br/>The dialogue would be typical of a Kung-Fu movie if there wasn't 15 minutes of emotional build-up prior to the "You fight with me!" tag-line, I'm swearing off this director and everyone involved in the film except Ziyi Zhang who played Gong Er; she was quite delightful but only for about 20 minutes near the end.<br/><br/>I honestly wish I could get my money back, I thought it was a loss of 2 hours in my life with no redeeming qualities; definitely not made for a Western audience :( Venturing into fresh creative terrain without relinquishing his familiar themes and stylistic flourishes, Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai exceeds expectations with The Grandmaster, fashioning a 1930s action saga into a refined piece of commercial filmmaking.
Aindrmarty replied
366 weeks ago