IP Man

Director: Wilson Yip
Writer: Edmond Wong (screenplay)
Stars: Donnie Yen, Simon Yam, Siu-Wong Fan

Well respected by everyone in the Chinese province of Fo Shan, Ip Man leads a comfortable life, this is until the Japanese Army occupies the province leaving all its inhabitants poverty stricken.  Working in a coal mine to support his family, Ip Man watches as Japanese troops show up daily and bribe workers to fight in tournaments. Hesitant to get involved Ip Man soon finds himself volunteering when friends and co workers begin to disappear without explanations. After discovering what is actually happening at these tournaments an outraged Ip Man decides he must step in and unleash his own personalized style of kick ass.

A semi factual film based on the life of (Yip) Ip Man, a grandmaster of the martial art known as Wing Chun, this is a good view for any fan of the martial arts.

The script provides a decent enough story that moves at a good pace while seemingly not attempting to recreate any specific events which could be open for debate.  A nice observation about this script is that it doesn’t try to incorporate any of the high flying acrobatic maneuvers which are seen in a lot of other movies in this genre.  It sticks with a decent amount of realism which I found to be a needed change considering it’s loosely based on a real individual within a historical time period.  The actors none of who I am familiar with except Donnie Yen all did a convincing job of creating an atmosphere which was reflective of the times and how the people suffered at the hands of the invading Japanese Army.

That said I won’t deny what really caught my attention about this movie that being the incredible choreographed fight scenes.  Donnie Yen is amazing in this movie, he is truly an incredibly talented martial artist.  The speed in which he throws the combinations of punches and kicks is amazing.  It makes me wonder why he isn’t seen in more main stream movies considering the amount of martial arts actors whose skills pale in comparison.  Over all this was a very entertaining semi biographical movie about a man who would eventually go on to mentor another martial arts legend and actor, Bruce Lee.

Rating: 2 1/2 Reels