Cast:
Donnie Yen (Ip Man), Lynn Hung (Cheung Wing-sing), Hiroyuki Ikeuchi (General Miura), Tenma Shibuya (Colonel Sato), Gordon Lam (Li Chiu), Fan Siu-wong (Jin Shanzhao), Simon Yam (Chow Ching-chuen), Xing Yu (Lin), Wong You-nam (Yuan), Calvin Cheng (Chow Kong-yiu), and Chen Zhihui (Master Liu) Directed by Wilson Yip.
Review:
A film viewer, if given enough time and resources to spend viewing movies beyond the usual ones, will probably find a worthwhile pattern to enjoy. This works especially well for action movies and the line that comes across between martial arts and biopic with this movie. The director for the film is Wilson Yip, a Hong Kong native who honed his craft between exploitation and comedy features before becoming an action presence with Bullets Over Summer (1999) that led to various other movies, complete with three collaborations with Donnie Yen, most notably SPL: Sha Po Lang (2005). Yen (born in Hong Kong but raised in Boston), was a star that rose from his interest in martial arts from a young age, doing so while also serving as fight choreographer for films in Asia and the United States, and he is generally credited for bringing mixed martial arts into Asian cinema. Yip and Yen would work together for the three sequels that came from this film (2010, 2015, 2019). The movie is a loose telling of Ip Man (sometimes referred to as Yip Man), who prior to this film had not had a full feature dedicated to his story, with previous features showing scenes of training one of his most famous pupils, Bruce Lee (such as Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story in 1993). The martial art style of Wing Chun is generally associated with him, who trained at the age of 12 and saw plenty of things over his use of Wing Chun from the Japanese occupation of China to having to flee the country to Hong Kong in middle-age and so on. It should be noted that there are a handful of films that cover certain elements of Ip Man; just to highlight a few, The Legend Is Born: Ip Man was released in 2010 with a number of actors from this film along with an appearance by Ip Chun (the son of Ip Man), while The Grandmaster, released in 2013 by the famed Wong Kar-wai that is noted for its cinematography and action, and a television series was made in 2013 that had Yip serving as artistic consultant. In a way, Yip Man became a hotbed for mythmaking and venture for countless movies just like Bruce Lee.
This feature was a co-production between Hong Kong and China, with Edmond Wong and Chain Tai-lee serving as writers. Sure, it may be a loose interpretation of history, because one really doesn't believe that Japanese generals would decide to fight Chinese martial artists, and Ip Man actually was a police officer in his time away from his native Foshan (which he left when the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) began). It is the presentation that matters most, and the martial arts choreography by Sammo Hung (with technical consultancy by Ip Chun) certainly lends a hand in carrying a movie that generally works out for 108 minutes in prime mythmaking entertainment. It doesn't flinch in its sequences of Wing Chun (which Yen had to spend months on) that make for captivating viewing, one that shows reverence for its subject matter without veering into parody. It is swift and efficient in the one category that it holds dear among all else, with the rest of the aspects doing just fine in the slick result generated by Yip and company, with Yen coming out the best among them. He looks like a seasoned pro in movement to go along with a general sense of calm charisma that can pass through scenes of restrained fury or family scenes without strain. The others do pretty well, albeit mostly within action sequences more than anything. The scene with Yen being tasked to face ten people is one of a number of interesting sequences, although the climax involving him and Ikeuchi is a worthy clincher, mashing the skills of skilled fighters with grace before it inevitably segues back into closing statements (because this is technically a biopic in fragments, remember) that likely will make one curious to what could be covered next. As a whole, it is a fine biopic that relies on the strength of its action in martial arts to carry it through, which ends up making a pretty good experience, one that is maneuvered by its star in Yen to enjoyment. However one feels about the subsequent explosion of Ip Man films, one can say that this was a worthy film to start the action off on the right foot.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
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