The great Yuen Woo-Ping steps in to replace Sammo Hung after “ Ip Man 2” and his work here is typically jaw-dropping as beautiful as it is nerve-wracking. There’s little plot, a new character is introduced, and then there’s a jaw-dropping sparring scene. Yip’s “Ip Man” films are constructed like golden-age Hollywood musicals or “Step Up” movies, and as they were never going to be perfect history (four movies come and go without a single mention of Ip Man’s illegitimate child), this is a wise and welcome decision.
As it happens there’s a Gunnery Sergeant named Barton Geddes ( Scott Adkins) who’s been itching for a way to put the local Chinese in their place, and this is all the pretext the virulent racist needs to start cracking skulls. They’ll need each other in the coming days because when that cheerleader tells her parents she was attacked by Chinese people, they involve INS and the military in their efforts to try and oust the Chinese from the area. While he’s touring the grounds, he notices Wan Zong Hua’s daughter Yonah (Vanda Margraf) being bullied by a white cheerleader (Grace Englert) and comes to her rescue, which starts the Tai Chi master on the path of recognizing Ip Man as a more principled man than he initially gave him credit. His visit to a prestigious school ends with the admissions officer saying that short of a 10,000 dollar donation or a letter of recommendation from other prosperous Chinese emigrants (like Wan Zong Hua, for instance), his son will never get into a decent American school. Things go no more smoothly for Ip Man in the coming days. Their disagreement almost comes to blows. The head of the Tai Chi school, Wan Zong Hua (Yue Wu), demands Ip Man put a muzzle on Lee and he refuses, believing that everyone should be able to practice the art form if they so choose.
But it turns out they’re all furious about Bruce Lee teaching kung fu to westerners. He’s called to a meeting of the heads of martial arts schools in America, thinking he’s just being shown hospitality as the world’s most renowned Wing Chun practitioner. He flies to America at the behest of his most famous student Bruce Lee ( Kwok-Kwan Chan) and uses the opportunity to look for a good school for his boy. Man’s fortunes decrease further when he learns that he too has been diagnosed with cancer (it would kill him in 1972) which means he only has a limited time to ensure that his son’s life takes the right turning. When we last left Yip and writer Edmond Wong’s version of Ip Man, his wife had died of cancer, leaving him to raise his son (Ye He) by himself. “Ip Man 4: The Finale” is apparently going to be the last time Yen dons the familiar black cassock to play Ip Man, and Yip orchestrates a fittingly spectacular finish to the saga. By the time “ Ip Man 3” hit theaters (grossing $157 million dollars against a $36-million-dollar budget) the movies' formula had solidified into a showcase for some of the world’s most famous mixed martial artists. A sequel was rushed into production that featured Hung in a supporting role and took even more money at the box office. The film treated Ip Man as a humble folk hero who liberated the people of his province by teaching them to defend themselves with Wing Chun-style kung fu from greedy bosses and the invading Japanese army in the lead up to the Second World War. When they made the first “Ip Man,” with the incredible Sammo Hung handling fight choreography, it became an instant sensation. Yip started his career as an irreverent genre re-upholsterer, making violent, punk genre films, the most famous of which is like 1998’s “Bio Zombie.” In 2005 he met and began working with Donnie Yen and settled into a more conventional rhythm and style, his mise-en-scene broadening to take in the balletic performance of his star.
Wong Kar-Wai’s “ The Grandmaster” is the best of the recent works about the Foshan-born icon, but Wilson Yip’s “Ip Man” series is tough to beat for charm and verve. Movies about the legendary martial artist Ip Man have become their own small industry.