‘100 Yards’ review: ‘The Grandmaster’ screenwriter Xu Haofeng delivers a blazingly elegant martial arts epic of his own

Blazing fast combat. Pronounced tension between tradition and modernity. Sound effects so intense that several foley artists probably died of exhaustion. A fight to inherit a famous martial arts academy, galvanized by a mutual obsession over the late master’s unbeatable secret technique. “100 Yards” is nothing if not a classic martial arts movie, and yet this bruising story about turn-of-the-century Tianjin — co-directed by Xu Haofeng, who previously scripted Wong Kar Wai’s “The Grandmaster” — has been shot and staged with such radical elegance that it seems less like a throwback than it does the pursuit of a new form. It’s a form this film is only able to achieve at the cost of its soul, as Xu and his brother Xu Junfeng struggle to sustain any of what makes their initial premise so compelling, but the moments when “100 Yards” lands its blows are exhilarating in a way that makes the movie feel miles removed from most of its competition.

Trailer

IMDb