63
The Grandmaster offers welcome relief from a moviegoing summer spent in sensory overload.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
63
The film, more likely to invite comparisons to the writings of Marcel Proust than the previous Ip Man films, is a gorgeous folly that never entirely emerges from its creator's head.
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Clarence Tsui
True to Wong’s style, The Grandmaster is infused with melancholy and a near-existentialist resignation to the uncertainties of fate.
83
Intermittently action-packed and lethargic, the movie dances around formula. By delivering an expressionistic character study with bursts of intensity unlike anything else in his oeuvre and yet stylistically representative of its entirety, Wong practically has it both ways.
67
All of Wong's undeniable visual flair can't conceal the haphazard nature of the story.
60
The Grandmaster, five years in the making, feels like a waste of Wong’s talents.
58
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
Tony Leung plays Ip Man with his old-movie charisma and reserve, but the film, despite a few splendid fights, is a biohistorical muddle that never finds its center. Maybe that's because — big mistake! — it never gets to Bruce Lee.
63
McClatchy-Tribune News Service by Roger Moore
A regal, majestic and downright arty take on this teacher, champion and philosopher whose life spanned much of the twentieth century.
80
Film.com by Stephanie Zacharek
This is a story told in shards; Wong is so obsessed with visual details – faces refracted as if in a broken mirror, or fragile arcs of blood being traced out on the pavement by the feet of two feuding kung fu masters – that the story he’s trying to tell is partly obscured by them.