Wing Chun

I forgot I had taped most of this off TNT a while back. I watched it again and am really beginning to enjoy how good Donnie Yen is. Easily as good as Jet Li and seems to have a greater acting range ( Jet seems always so serious and intense). But I need to see more of each. Anyway the fight scenes are good, good and varied techniques, though not looking like really wing chun. Unnecessarily speeded up (these guys are fast enough) and too much wire fu - typical Yuen Woo Ping it seems. It would be good to see Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen together in a modern film.

This is a great showcase for Michelle Yeoh, playing the legendary first practitioner of the wing chun style, Yim Wing-Chun. Trouble is, there's not much of the wing chun style shown in the film. The problem is that though the wing chun system is a very effective style in real life, it's not very visually engaging, so Yuen Woo Ping had to throw in some high kicks just to spice up the action a little ... but then, we don't watch kung fu films for historical or technical accuracy.

Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen are both pretty good here. Certainly, Yeoh turns in a starry performance, though Yen could have been given more to do ...

Overall, entertaining enough, but not primo YWP fare.

Wing Chun is an entertaining combination of slapstick humour and amazing martial arts fights. It's a romantic comedy at heart, one with a feminist bent. The story, while simple, features several memorable characters. There are setpiece battles that move the story along. Most of these feature Michelle Yeoh as the charismatic and beautiful Yim Wing Chun. Yuen Woo-ping's fight choreography is as usual inventive. He included moves that are quick and fresh, many of these aren't featured in other films. Donnie Yen's unusual turn as Leung Pok To, a man who has come to town to wed Yim Wing Chun is also of note. All in all, there's enough character development, humour, fights, and good scenery here to make Wing Chun one of the best martial arts films ever. It's not quite as good as the director's other famous film Iron Monkey (1993), but it's still a delight. Where else can you find actresses this good-looking and fights this exciting? Come to think of it, Peking Opera Blues (1986) probably influenced Yuen Woo-ping's filmmaking. I easily recommend seeing Wing Chun.

Despite that fact that different plot ideas for Kung Fu movie has been fully exploited by now and no new ideas are coming, Wing Chun still stands out in its uniqueness mostly because Michelle Yeoh is its star. If this movie was done by anyone else, it probably would have ended up being a dud, but she brings class to this movie it otherwise would not have had. The movie has very different atmosphere from other Kung Fu movies. While silly things are happening, Michelle Yeoh's action is precise and eye opening. She's the only one playing strait, and it works.

There has been other Kung Fu movies done by female lead, but they are mostly gruesomely violent. While there're lot of action in this movie, none of its action is violent. You won't see any blood, no bones being crushed, and yet it's filled with great action.

Somewhat difficult to find these days, but you owe it to yourself to see this movie at least once.

Michelle Yeoh stars as the titular Yim Wing Chun, the spiritual mother of Wing Chun kung fu (the kind they teach in Prodigal Son, amongst others). As you would expect from Yeoh, she is vibrant on screen, kicking a lot of arse and showing us the sensitive side to a martial arts hero.

Wing Chun's village is constantly under threat by bandits led by the…erm… flying simian family (well two brothers, Flying Monkey and Flying Chimp). After she cracks some skulls, while rescuing the widow ‘Charmy', she makes enemies of the local martial artists, who lose face after Wing Chun shows them up, and the bandits, who want her dead and for Flying Monkey to marry Charmy. The scene where Wing Chun shows the local martial arts heros the ‘Art of fighting without fighting' in the soya shop is amazing. Anyway, after castrating flying monkey, flying chimp decides to challenge Wing Chun, for the honour of the bandit clan. With inevitable consequences.

When Wing Chun isn't giving us great fight sequences, it plays it like quite a lot of HK cinema. For laughs. And, like a lot of HK cinema, it can get pretty irritating. A lot of mugging and juvenile humour are the order of the day here. Concentrating on that old Kung Fu film staple, getting laid.

Wing Chun was one of the first great high flying new style kung fu films and stands the test of time, nine years on. I really liked it, and forgiving its faults is easy. Although Donnie Yen was criminally under used, but that's not such a big deal.