Ip Man Kung Fu Master - Les origines

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.

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.

When you cannot tell if it supposed to be a comedy or a martial arks movie, then something is terribly wrong. It somehow reminds me of KingFu Hustle by how goofy it is.

The only thing done extremely well is the scenery, filming locations, costume design and overall time period feel.

It had the potential to visually be absolutely stunning, but the plot and acting just ruins the experience. Hence, the wasted potential. Such a sad fizzle ending to the extraordinary Ip Man series.

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

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.