Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

The Final Master Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 24, 2017

There is an almost baffling array of various films and television properties about wing chun master Ip Man, including such entries as Ip Man (also available as Ip Man Collector’s Edition), Ip Man 2 (also available as a Ip Man 2 Collector’s Edition ), Ip Man 3 (why no Collector’s Edition, Well Go USA?), The Legend Is Born: Ip Man, Ip Man: The Final Fight, Ip Man, and The Grandmaster. One might think that the history of wing chun is at least relatively well handled given that glut of offerings, but one of The Grandmaster’s scribes, Haofeng Xu, is on hand here as both writer and director of The Final Master, yet another (apparently more fictionalized) story that involves this admittedly fascinating martial art. I was frankly confused by large swaths of The Final Master, to the point that I wasn’t quite sure for whom I should be rooting, but the film is awash in spectacular fight scenes and those action elements may be more than enough to curry favor with folks who have loved previous films of this same general ilk, including all those Ip Man entries listed above.

The film begins with an odd vignette that looks like it’s taking place aboard a train and which I’m frankly not quite sure what to make of (despite having watched it several times now). A series of quick cuts may further confuse things for some viewers (as they certainly did for me), but the film settles down at least somewhat after a battle in a largely deserted hall that pits Chen (Liao Fen) against a parade of combatants (who of course follow time honored tradition by only attacking one at a time). When Chen has vanquished all of them, it’s revealed that there has been an audience member of sorts, Zheng (Shijie Jin), who is both the repository of martial arts wisdom in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin in the 1930s, as well as Chen’s possible sponsor of sorts in Chen’s desire to open a wing chun academy in the burg.

There are labyrinthine and seemingly completely arbitrary hoops that Chen needs to jump through in order to achieve his goal, but the bottom line (or loaf of bread, as the case may be, as evidenced by a weird metaphor used in a scene set in a restaurant) is that Chen will need to defeat followers of eight other schools of fighting, in a plot conceit that is at least a little reminiscent (albeit tangentially) of the old Shaw Brothers classic The Five Deadly Venoms. But there are other corollary rules that need to be followed, which ultimately result in Chen taking a wife virtually unseen, the lovely but troubled Zhao (Song Jia). Chen also appoints an acolyte of sorts, the much less suave Geng (Song Yang), a kind of atavistic sort who actually ends up doing a lot of the fighting.

The dialogue is surprisingly arch throughout The Final Master, even if some basic plot points may seem maddeningly opaque. Upending all of this, however, (both literally and figuratively) are the spectacular fight scenes, which involve everything from hand to hand combat to a variety of knives and blades to long poles which are also adorned with knives and blades. The fight choreography is where The Final Master blasts off into the stratosphere, and the good news is it does this blasting with almost nonstop regularity, this despite time taken to develop the relationships between the four focal characters. Some of the supposed intrigue and treachery never really makes that much sense (or at least it didn’t for this particular viewer), but with a breathless pace and a nicely opulent production design, adrenaline junkies may simply not care all that much.

The Final Master Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Final Master is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists only a 2K DI in its technical database, but this has the sleek, glossy and sometimes slightly flat aspect of digital capture. Detail levels are uniformly high throughout the presentation, this despite some less than optimal lighting conditions and a couple of scenes that actually take place in near darkness. The palette is nicely naturalistic looking, without a glut of obvious or aggressive grading. Fine detail in elements like fabrics, including everything from costumes to upholstery, is generally excellent. Several extreme close-ups give some gut wrenching views of various injuries suffered by the combatants. Xu and cinematographer Tianlin Wang often favor wide angle shots (and even some extreme wide angle shots), and occasionally detail levels can suffer in these moments, albeit in a rather minor fashion. Without much in the way of supplemental material, and without an overly lengthy running time, The Final Master resides comfortably on a BD-25 without any discernable compression anomalies.

The Final Master Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

I couldn't help but wish The Final Master had been released with a Dolby Atmos or DTS:X track, because this is a film highly reliant on some inventive sound effects, and while the included DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is a superb blend of excellent fidelity and regular surround activity, I had to wonder what pinpoint (and midair) placement of some of the sound effects in the many fight scenes might have done to even further the film's already impressive sonic energy. All of this said, the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track regularly offers discrete channelization of individual effects, but also regularly exploits cool panning sounds as some of the long poles utilized "whoosh" through the air in various skirmishes. Dialogue comes through cleanly and clearly despite some boisterous actions scenes, and the film's kind of anachronistically modern score by Wei An also sounds excellently clear.

The Final Master Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Weapons (1080p; 3:26) is a fun look at some of the accoutrements the combatants use in the film.


• Director Featurette (1080p; 2:37) profiles Haofeng Xu.


• Trailer (1080p; 1:38)

As tends to be the case with Well Go USA releases, the supplements have been authored to follow one another automatically. After these three play, the disc is authored to move on automatically to the trailers for other Well Go USA releases.

The Final Master Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I had quite a few questions by the time I had made it through The Final Master for the first time, and I have to say even a second parsing of the film didn't help to clarify all that much. The basic outlines of the plot are always more or less clear, but this is one film whose subtexts and nuances may simply have been "lost in translation" for a Western audience. That said, the film is so breathlessly inventive in its fight sequences that any passing qualms end up falling by the wayside, kind of like a combatant suddenly confronted with the force of wing chun. Technical merits are strong, and with caveats duly noted, The Final Master comes Recommended.