Ip man 4: Le dernier combat

My only objection is the selection of a 40+ yrs old actor to play a 24yrs old Bruce Lee. The aged face of that actor was more than obvious. Aside from that, i really enjoyed the movie. All four of them are excellent movies.

The fight scenes were good as usual and I love the depiction of Ip Man as being calm, honorable and good. It was nice to see Bruce Lee in a few scenes, very few. You can feel that the end of Ip Man is coming in how the story moves along. I did enjoy this movie to a point because it gave a conclusion to Ip Man's story, but half of the movie seemed to be focused on white people being racist toward every other race which most movies and tv shows in this age of political correctness like to focus on now.

There is a big difference in the story telling from the first Ip Man to this final installment. The first had a great story that did not try to stereotype anyone or any race. This one is focused on race period. If you want to see the conclusion to a once great franchise, I recommend this as a rental, but otherwise, I cannot recommend it.

Like all 3 films before this one the plots are based on real historic events, and in order for ALL audience to get the "message" and create a contrast of the two sides so they can root for the good guys, filmakers always exaggerates, e.g. twice the hate, twice the shame, twice the fall, or else it's just a boring documentary. It's the type of risk the investors nowadays might not want to take if the "message" isn't clear. So here we are with the film as it is.

The portrayed Americans are unrealistically dumb, and their dialogue seem like it came out of a high school play. There's a bunch of scenes which all they do is provoke a fight and be as bad as they can be. For the audience these parts are extremely uncomfortable to watch, and awkward. But after these scenes everything's back to normal for a while.

The fight scenes are superb, just great. The Chinese actors all did a wonderful job of acting, even though I think they should speak Mandarin to each other instead of one guy Mandarin and the other guy Cantonese.

Haters and patriots are not going to like it because it's a film made mainly for Chinese audience, but we're here to see some fights so don't get sucked into all that political propaganda.

The good, watchable parts of the movie centered on Donnie Yen and the challenges of parenting. The martial arts scenes were entertaining and effective, as was the presence of Bruce Lee and his school. Banda Margraf balanced all the heavy characters like a breath of fresh air, her character was like able, watchable, and gave Ip Man insight. The story was mostly set in San Francisco, so as a yank it was disconcerting to see the many little things that the movie didn't get right. The big things, like the closest Marine base is 300 miles away, are forgiveable (they're telling a story and need a villain). But the little things, like federal officers would be bearded and wearing black leather jackets, like Kung fu movie villains, took away from the movie. And just to get this straight, A Marine can not walk into an ICE building and demand a prisoner be handed over since the ICE agent is more afraid of losing his pension than of getting beaten. This film is tainted by claiming that overt violent hatred of Chinese, to the extent that our military targeted them, existed. This at a time when China is trying to make the US look bad so they can illegally grab the South China Sea.

Most can probably agree that the 'Ip Man' films just got worse as time went on. The action was always great, but the general story lines and acting just went downhill.

As much as I loved Donnie Yen playing Ip Man, I'm glad he's done, at least I certainly hope so. Bruce Lee was basically just a random throw in character and was reduced to a very limited role, when he should have been one of the main characters and plot points. Instead racism is the plot. The acting, especially by anyone who wasn't Chinese was absolutely horrendous, so cringe every time, aside from maybe Scott Adkins.

The first film is phenomenal. Filled with not only great action, but great emotion. The others, especially number 4, just couldn't emulate it, even though they tried.