Ip Man
Wilson Yip


The story: In the thriving southern Chinese city of Foshan in the 1930s, martial arts expert Ip Man (Donnie Yen) tries to keep above the fray of martial arts schools competing fiercely for students. When war breaks out and the Japanese army swoops in, Ip can no longer keep a low profile.

Ip who, you ask?
You might not be familiar with the man, but perhaps you have heard of his most famous disciple – gongfu superstar Bruce Lee. The movie was probably greenlit on the strength of that fact.
However, if it is a detailed biography of the late Ip Man you are looking for, this is not the place to find it. And no, Bruce Lee does not appear either.
It would be more accurate to think of this as a gongfu flick with Ip’s life serving as a loose narrative structure.
When the audience first meets Ip, he is a man in the prime of his life who seems to have it all. He is the acknowledged gongfu champ in Foshan despite not having a single student. He lives in a big house and has a beautiful wife (Lynn Xiong) and a young son.
His biggest problem, which he despatches while barely breaking a sweat, is a gang of ruffians from the north who go around challenging, and defeating, all the other teachers.
Biopics sometimes drown you in details but in this case, you wish there was some explanation of how Ip got to where he was at the beginning of the film. Instead, you barely get a sense of the man beyond the fact that he is a saint.
When war breaks out, Ip is turned out of his house and forced to scrape an existence from menial work. Still, he keeps his cool until his friends are killed in matches with Japanese karate fighters, organised for the amusement of General Miura (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi).
The showdown between Ip and Miura is the action highlight of the film but while the fight sequences are entertaining enough, there is nothing about them that is truly surprising or inventive.
With his martial arts background, Yen does a credible job with the combat scenes and to his credit, he imbues the upright and moral Ip with the hint of a smile and prevents the character from becoming too stuffy.
There is little for Xiong, singer-actor Aaron Kwok’s purported real-life squeeze, to do here in the role of the supportive wife.
Since this is not a strictly factual biopic anyway, it might have been nice to see her break the ornamental huaping (flower vase) mould and bust out some gongfu moves of her own.
(ST)