At the core of things is a quartet of characters: Chen the wife he proposes to before they’ve ever spoken (Song Jia, who deepens the character’s complicated nature) Zheng (Jin Shi-Jye), a local master who wants to ensure that ancient knowledge is passed down and Geng (Song Yeng), a cocksure prodigy who becomes Chen’s apprentice after hitting on his wife (?). This setup will soon get much more complicated, with further proxies, double-crosses and motivations that may be more comprehensible to Chinese audiences than they are here. While it lacks the filmmaking mastery that has carried some wuxia pictures to mainstream success Stateside, it is more than handsome and stylish enough to win over many of the fence-sitters who’ve learned to appreciate the genre’s highlights. As infused with seriousness about kung fu philosophy as his earlier work but also deeply invested in a complicated set of social rules governing behavior in Tianjin, then a hotbed of chopsocky training, the picture has a strong appeal to genre fans. ![]() Xu Haofeng, the best-selling author of martial-arts fiction who co-wrote the script for Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster, returns to the director’s chair with another tale of 1930s expert fighters in The Final Master.
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