Review of The Final Master

Tianjin in 1932 is full of martial arts schools, and there are strict rules for bringing in new ones. So when Master Chen (Liao Fan) comes to town with the aim of starting his own school, he finds that he must first recruit one or more apprentices, train them for three years and then have them defeat no less than 8 of the established schools before getting one of his own. But the person defeating those schools might be exiled from Tianjin forever, and there are more forces than the school masters who have a stake in the outcome…. About halfway through this film, I realized I had completely lost the plot, but as a friend of mine pointed out, by the halfway point plot is kind of meaningless anyway; one watches this film for the beautifully choreographed fight scenes and admiration for how sophisticated martial arts can be. I've not seen a million of these films, but have seen more than a few, and what most intrigued me about this one was its setting; most martial arts films that I've seen are set in the distant or at least centuries'- ago past, whereas this is 1932, relatively modern and complete with Caucasian extras throughout the story-line. And of course, short years before complete mayhem erupted there. Interesting!