I’m trying to imagine another sport in which you’d take a septuagenarian opponent seriously. Golf, I suppose, but only if I weren’t confident of my skills. Shuffleboard? Lawn bowling? “It’s a young man’s game” applies to many activities, but not, apparently, to one that would, on its surface, require: strength, constitution, sharpness of mind, lightning reflexes, agility, a healthy command of ones senses, and, I dunno, maybe somebody who hasn’t yet been reduced to eating pudding at all meals.
Let me put it this way: in a fistfight, I’m pretty sure I can beat the Dagobah out of Yoda. He wins because he uses The Force. But The Force doesn’t exist in this world. So, seriously, Bruce Lee would be 73 this year. Are you saying 73-year-old Bruce Lee could kick Enter the Dragon Lee’s ass? Really?
In WWII China, there was a legendary martial artist, Ip Man (51-year-old Tony Leung Chiu Wai). I know; it sounds like the guy you call when your computer has a virus. This guy never lost a fight in, like, 30 years. He often takes on multiple opponents in the rain while wearing his best Sunday fightin’ hat. I kept waiting for Short Round to show up and hand it back to him when necessary. In 1936, the Chinese decided to crown The Grandmaster of kung fu and invited all clans of varied fighting styles to come join in the fun. It’s kinda like the beginning of The Warriors. The big meet turns anti-climactic because everybody knows that on the South Side of the Yang-tze, Ip is the baddest Man in town. Hence, the increasingly frail foes are just there to show Ip Man their 
respective clan’s style. Geez, old man, what are you gonna show him? The “Metamucil Drop?” The “Poli-Grip?”
The collection of mild showdowns finally shows some life when Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang) shows up to save face after Ip Man humiliates her father. Their battle quickly shifts to something less resembling a brawl and more resembling a ballet of suppressed passion. Had The Grandmaster continued to follow this arc, I’m quite sure the film would have been a greater success. But this is a biography, and there was already an Ip Woman and a whole slew of Ip Boys and Ip Girls, so this was as close as he could get to fortune nookie.
I really, really apologize for that last remark. Really.
I don’t mind spoiling this storyline as those will go to The Grandmaster for the kung fu, not the romance. Late in the film, Gong delivers one of my cherished moments of the cineyear. Finally disposed to the notion of forever unfulfilled passion, she laments, “how boring it must be to live a life without regret.”
Boring, indeed.
♪Every old man was kung fu fighting!
Their kicks were almost frightening
Why there was no use hoping
Those folks weren’t Geritol doping♫
Rated PG-13, 108 Minutes
D: Kar Wai Wong
W: Kar Wai Wong, Jingzhi Zou, Haofeng Xu
Genre: (Everybody was) Kung Fu Fighting
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Kung Fools
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: The subtitle challenged
♪Parody inspired by “Kung Fu Fighting”
