Get the Flash Player to see this player.
Donnie Yen and Wilson Yip (S.P.L., Flashpoint, Dragon Tiger Gate) are at it again, this time recounting the life of the famous Wing Chun master who first taught Bruce Lee kung fu…
As the fourth collaboration between director Wilson Yip and action superstar-in-waiting Donnie Yen, you might expect Ip Man to be a somewhat jaded, predictable affair. Instead, their continuing journey through different styles and genres, albeit with an obvious action bent, has hit upon a likeable, even thoughtful depiction of the life of Ip Man – all with a shrewd eye on the international market.
Yen plays Ip Man, a celebrated master of Wing Chun who went on to become the first to teach the martial art openly. The film focuses on his life in the city of Foshan between 1930 and 1940, leading up to its occupation during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
As you might expect for a film about a martial arts master, the first half sets up Ip’s character and skill. A hub for martial art schools, we find Ip well respected within Foshan for his prowess, but instead prefering to live as quiet and unassuming life as possible, careful to not to embarrass rival martial art masters for being much less capable than himself. That starts to change, however, when an aggressive Northern master, Jin Shanzhao (Siu-Wong Fan, Righting Wrongs, Project S, Future X-Cops), comes to the city to contest with all schools leaders. Soon only Ip remains, but he swiftly defeats the Northern master, saving regional pride and face.
We then rush ahead a few years to the Japanese occupation, and arguably historical accuracy gets somewhat fuzzier. We find Ip and his young family reduced to poverty, his friends and acquaintances persecuted under Japanese rule. Most shockingly of all he finds his peers forced to dual with the Japanese for bags of rice, their leader General Miura (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, X-Cross) intent on proving that Japan’s martial arts are far superior. When his old friend and mill owner Zhou Qing Quan (Simon Yam, Election, Full Contact) calls on his help against a gang of thieves led by Jin Shanzhao, teaching Zhou’s employees to defend themselves, his good intentions soon bring him to the attention of General Muira. A decisive dual is coming, and a defining moment for the oppressed people of China.
Or so the story goes… In reality there’s nothing to suggest Ip Man did little more than keep an understandably low profile before he escaped to Hong Kong, but then that wouldn’t make such a great movie would it. (Anyone might think the story had been exaggerated to play up similarities to the story of Bruce Lee’s Fist Of Fury?)
And let’s face it, when it comes to film accounts of legendary kung fu masters – themselves a sizable sub-genre of martial arts films, it’s not worth getting hung up on accuracy is it? From hundreds of movies based around Wong Fei Hung, including the Once Upon A Time In China series, Drunken Master and Iron Monkey films to accounts of Huo Yuanjia (Fearless) and San Te (36th Chamber Of Shaolin), the references are too numerous to mention, but always dealt with in varying degrees of, shall we say, ‘looseness’ when it comes to facts.
As with Yen and Yip’s previous collaboration Flashpoint, hardcore kung fu fans maybe a little disappointed with Ip Man’s pace. There’s a lot of character-building and situation development – you know, stuff a lot of fans aren’t particularly interested in. Which seems quite deliberate when you bear in mind producer Raymond Wong’s statement on the film, that while striving to maintain local box office, filmmakers should not over look the international market. That boils down to making an action film that will appeal to more than just action fans. And actually, this time around director Yip deals with the affair pretty well.
The moments with Ip’s family, though a little hammy, are fine. There are nice quips about Wing Chun being a ‘girls martial art’ – which it was, kind of. The melodrama is rather over the top, but generally Yip and his cast seem to delight (Japanese oppression or not) in recreating a lush vision of 30s China. (At least something seems to have rubbed off from Ang Lee’s wonderful Lust, Caution.) And I know I’ve been more than a little disparaging about Yen’s performances in the past, but here he’s not half bad.
Sure, the plot’s somewhat overly simplistic, and when Yip tries to depict into what happens to families during war, like Kung Fu Crazy Lam (Xing Yu), who ends up in one of the Japanese ad hoc tournaments, and his brother Yuan (Wong You-Nam), who joins forces with the gang of thieves, he quickly gets out of his depth. But the real disappointment is the depiction of the Japanese as villians: all one-dimensional and straight out of a 40s US comic-book, they’re reminiscent of the sort of portrayal we’d have been used to in the films of the early 80s films like The Postman Fights Back and Fist Of Legend (itself a Fist Of Fury makeover). It may have been forgivable then, but not in this day and age.
So what of the action itself?
Well, once again for Yip and Yen, this really doesn’t disappoint, even though this time Yen hands over control of the action choreography to his S.P.L. co-star Sammo Hung. Neither Yen nor Hung were strangers to the martial art style of Wing Chun, with Yen having appeared alongside Michelle Yeoh in the eponymous film about the styles creator, and Hung having choreographed if for two films he also directed, Warriors Two and the all-time classic The Prodigal Son.
Yet here Yip’s direction – no doubt spurred on by the blessing of Ip Man’s son himself, Ip Chun, to make the film – is far more considerate of the differences in style. Less ‘showy’, the style is far more about close combat. Here Yip and Hung really do innovate in the way they show the martial art, creating a very different looking film than what we’re used to in kung fu. As with Flashpoint, the underlying emphasis is on a far more realistic representation of martial arts on film.
Ip Man has been a great success in Hong Kong, picking up Best Film Award at the 28th Hong Kong Festival and an award for Sammo Hung for his Action Choreography, and looks set to gain a lot of international interest. Deservedly. And though you can’t help wondering if Yip and Yen have in fact been searching for a formula that might be able to spin off into sequels, I’m glad this is the one to do it. The sequel is literally filming as we speak, and this time Hung gets a lead role. So for the first time since S.P.L. we’ll get to see them on screen together? Let’s hope so…
Ip Man is released by Cine Asia/Showbox Entertainment at selected UK cinemas from Friday 2 October, and will be released as a two-disc DVD (£15.99) and single-disc Blu-ray (£19.99) on 26 October 2009.
