Ip Man Kung Fu Master - Les origines

From the opening scene this movie does more to make wing chun look stupid than it does to entertain. It's very much performed in the style of "lots of movement, little visibility" and usually against numbers that makes the burly brawl from the Matrix Reloaded look positively gritty and realistic by comparison, while reducing wing chun to mostly chain punching. Poor representation of the art, retelling a story you've seen plenty of times before, and all of them done a lot better.

Music's good, though.

I must admit that when I stumbled upon the 2019 movie "Ip Man: Kung Fu Master" here in 2021 then I was fairly surprised and thrilled. I didn't know that they had made another Ip Man movie, so this was a nice surprise. And needless to say that I needed no persuasion to sit down to watch it.

Well, hold your horses there for a second. This movie is not as good as the most other Ip Man movies were, particularly the ones with Donnie Yen. No, not even close.

Sure, "Ip Man: Kung Fu Master" was watchable, but don't get your hopes up high for this 2019 movie from writers Liming Li and Qingshui Shi. It was watchable, yeah, but this movie was just lacking a properly thoroughly thought-through storyline. Everything in the movie seemed rushed and shallow.

Yu-Hang To - playing Ip Man - definitely knew his martial arts and put on a rather impressive display. But a movie about him just fighting was hardly something that counted as properly entertaining. A shame really, that the writers had failed to come up with a more interesting and complete storyline.

While I managed to sit through the entire movie, this is hardly a martial arts classic, nor is it a movie that warrants more than a single viewing.

My rating of "Ip Man: Kung Fu Master" lands on a four out of ten stars. The movie came and went without leaving much of a lasting impression. If you enjoy martial arts movies, there are far better movies out there. And if you enjoy movies about Ip Man, there are far better movies out there.

Just not in the same realm as the other Ip Man films, Donnie Yen is still the King.

This was so bad. Opening scene of one (only hands/feet) against over a hundred adversaries (and with hand axes). Defeats them all. More mass disparity fight scenes follow; all have been seen so many times before. Nothing creative; lots of stereotypes; no acting; no story; good promotional commercial for a kung fu style. Vague ending to make money off of a sequel.

This movie is waste of time. It manages make the talents (who are accomplished, legitimate martial artists) look like they don't know how to fight. The action scenes are marred by horrible pacing and camera angles so tight it is impossible to follow any of it.

There is questionable use of music and the plot makes no sense as it switches between unrelated narrative threads that all have no consequence on the main character. The attempt to creative weight falls way short of its mark and the shallow moments will make you writhe on your seat from how forced it is.

Finally, the film fails to find any original moments as it plagiarizes from its far superior predecessors Ip Man 1, 2, The Grandmaster, and Chen Zhen Legend of The First. Do yourself a favour and watch those movies instead.