'Master' is a very cleanly made film. It looks good and it flows well. The story is tightly written, and while a little too stretched out, it has more than enough going for it to keep the viewer attentive and enjoying them self. It can be hard with foreign language films to judge the acting skills, but from what I could tell the actors did a fine job for the most part. You can tell a lot of time and care has gone into the making of this film.
As previously mentioned, the story couldn't really justify a near 2 and half hour run time. 30 minutes of that could easily have been shaved off. Also a lack of action scenes for the a large portion of the movie can try your patience a little. There is also very little humour and when they do try some it mostly falls flat.
The thing that held me back from really enjoying this though was the characters. Every single character seemed to be deplorable and that left no one to root for. The film tries to give certain characters a heart at different stages, but it falls short in achieving this. The villains in the film were excellent characters and very well written, the only problem being that that was almost every character in some way. Otherwise though it's a pretty harmless, if somewhat forgettable, little action film.
As previously mentioned, the story couldn't really justify a near 2 and half hour run time. 30 minutes of that could easily have been shaved off. Also a lack of action scenes for the a large portion of the movie can try your patience a little. There is also very little humour and when they do try some it mostly falls flat.
The thing that held me back from really enjoying this though was the characters. Every single character seemed to be deplorable and that left no one to root for. The film tries to give certain characters a heart at different stages, but it falls short in achieving this. The villains in the film were excellent characters and very well written, the only problem being that that was almost every character in some way. Otherwise though it's a pretty harmless, if somewhat forgettable, little action film.