Reader Recommendations: Ip Man

First and foremost, I must thank @WBandoy for the suggestion of us watching this movie. We love movie suggestions, it gives us a bit of insurance, as in that someone liked the movie and is willing to spread the love. Unless of course that person has a horrible taste in movies and what they are recommending to us is a pile of garbage, take in point any damn Mega Shark movie, I cringe whenever I think about that movie. Today’s movie is a very loose biography of Ip Man, a grandmaster of the martial arts Wing Chun. And when I say loose, there is a lot in this movie that does not actually happen, so take this movie with a grain of salt please. Click more to find out if I actually liked this movie.

I must start off by saying that I am a big fat dummy head. Now I will explain why I say this. I went into this movie thinking, “Oh great a Chinese martial arts movie, bland generic story, a lot of bad acting, horrible dubbing, over acting, and ugly production. At least the action will be semi decent, but nothing as good as good ol’ Bruce Willis badassery.” I am so glad I was wrong; this movie on all accounts is the exact opposite of what I thought this movie was. The movie was fast paced, loved the story, the production was amazing, the fight scenes were top notch and from what I could get from, the acting was phenomenal.

Ip Man, ready to kick ass.

Let me start off with the part of the movie that most surprised me, the story. I loved it, it was interesting and unique, it had a great blend of hero v. villains but deep enough so I didn’t have to take my brain out to watch it. The story is based on Ip, a wealthy grandmaster of martial arts. He gets challenged by another martial arts master, and Ip kicks his ass. Then gets challenged by an out of towner hooligan, and Ip kicks his ass. Than WW2 kicks in and BAM, Japan takes over China and everyone is fled out of their house, including the great Ip Man. This force’s Ip Man to work and save money so he can buy rice for his family, this is the first time he ever works in his life and it is in a coal mine, talk about hard luck. The story turns around when the Japanese army general makes the Chinese fight the Japanese martial artist. If they win, they get a sack of rice. After Ip Man finds out his friends were brutally (I mean Mortal Kombat brutal) beaten up and killed by the Japanese Army, he finds it his goal to defeat the army general. After he kicks 10 no names ass at the same time, I hope you see the pattern here, the general challenges Ip Man in which he declines. And this is where I am going to blue ball all you readers. I am doing no good retelling this story to you; the movie does the story far more justice than you reading about it.

Second thing I loved about this movie: the fight scenes, and trust me there are plenty of them. And I am glad this movie does fight scenes a bit differently than the recent Hollywood movies. I was getting real tired of the shaky camera being held by a man with Parkinson’s, changing camera angles every 0.5 seconds and the annoying and crappy music. The fight scenes in this movie were well choreographed which were pulled out amazingly and made Jackie Chan’s early stuff look like child’s play. Yes sometimes they used the ropes to fly actors when they got hit, but they were limited and were not over exaggerated. Some of the moves are a bit graphic, bones are broken and blood is spat out, but again in modest amounts. So you get the feel of the amount of ass whopping this man does but don’t get overwhelmed.

Everything else in this movie was great; I mean I can barely find reasons to hate this movie. And to wrap it up, it is a great action movie that will surprise you. I loved it; I can’t find reasons why you also wouldn’t. In other news, I was reading a few facts up on this Ip Man, and this man trained Bruce Lee, which is quite interesting. Also, the name is pronounced Yip Man, not Eye Pee Man, (looking at you Jim). Thanks for reading!