0:000:00
2015 Chinese martial arts film "The Master" is the first big budget commercial film by writer and director Xu Haofeng, and also the first opportunity for the wider audience to have a taste of Xu's distinctive style.<br><br>Xu's very first feature film met with lukewarm reception from the market back in 2012, and for that reason his second one never received wide-scale publicity. Although his stories have been adapted by famous film director Wong Kar Wai in "The Grand Master", and by Chen Kaige in "Daoshi Xiaoshan" or "Monk Comes Down the Mountain," neither of those has quite captured the apparently bizarre yet intrinsically straightforward logic that motivates the characters in his story.<br><br>"The Master" will have a better chance of impressing the general public. Set in Tianjin in the Early 20th Century, the story follows a Guangdong master who seeks to expand the influence of his martial arts school in a heavily guarded territory. To achieve this, he can't just go ahead and challe...