MyRating: YYYY1/2Director: Wilson Yip
Cast: Donnie Yen, Sammo Hung, Huang Xiaoming, Lynn Hung, Kent Cheng, Fan Siu-Wong, Simon Yam, Darren Shahlavi
While the first Ip Man focuses on the events in his life in Foshan, China, during the Japanese invasion in 1930s, Ip Man 2 focuses on his life in Hong Kong while it was under the administration of the British colony. After survived from the Japanese in the first movie, Ip Man (Donnie Yen) and his family move to Hong Kong. Life is not easy for him, as he has to start everything from the beginning, has no money to pay his rent and a family to feed. To make a living, Ip Man decides to start a school to teach Wing Chun martial arts on a roof top of a building. But since no one knows him, he is having difficulty to find students. He finally gets one when an arrogant and cocky young man named Wong Leung (Huang Xiaoming) challenges him to fight, as the young man doubted Ip's ability to teach martial arts. And Wong is easily defeated. Feeling humiliated, Wong comes back with his friends to gang up on Ip. But again, Ip easily beats them. Impressed by Ip's skills, Wong and his friends ask him to accept them as his students. And that is the beginning, as each day, more students come to join his school.
But Wong Leung is a short-fused young man as he soon gets into a fight with another martial arts school students of Hung Ga practitioners. And this brings Ip Man and his school into a conflict with Hung Chun-nam (Sammo Hung), the school master of Hung Ga as well as the most influential grandmaster in their local area. To make things harder for Ip, Hung gives him a challenge to fight with other martial arts school masters in a match, before they can allow him to set a school in their area. And Ip finds himself in a position to accept the challenge and to win it, if not, his school will be disbanded and Wing Chun will never be known.
At almost the same time, the British sets a boxing competition in order for their own boxer and all the Chinese martial arts school students to display their skills. But what supposed to be a friendly competition turns into a showcase of arrogant from the British, as their boxing champ, a very strong and fierce Twister (Darren Shahlavi), looks down on the Chinese martial arts and humiliated the Chinese in front of the public, by brutally hurting the Chinese students and comparing the Chinese martial arts as nothing more than a useless stupid dance. Do not want their pride and honor for their country being stepped like that, Ip Man and the other Chinese masters have to stand up, as someone has to prove that Twister is wrong and the Chinese people can never accept such kind of humiliation.
This is a great martial arts movie. A simple but good and engaging story, with a showcase of awesome fight scenes of Chinese martial arts. Donnie Yen finally got his biggest and icon role of his career in his 40s as Ip Man (similar to the icon role Jet Li got as Wong Fei Hung in Once Upon a Time in China in his late 20s). Yen's cool acting and his terrific martial arts performance is the main attraction of this movie (he really possesses martial arts skills as he learned Wushu in his young age before becoming a movie star). It is wonderful just to watch him fight with his bare fists.
Another great actor that adds the value to the cast is Sammo Hung. The appearance of this senior actor overwhelmed the screen. His duel with Yen is what everybody's waiting for. Two great action stars with real kung fu skills fighting each other in one scene. What a great scene! It's worth the ticket itself. Another interesting cast is Huang Xiaoming, one of the most popular actors in mainland China nowadays, as the first disciple of Ip Man, and he played his role very well.
Two thumbs up should be given to Sammo Hung who choreographed the whole martial arts sequences in this movie. His choreographies are top-notch and breathtaking. He also choreographed the first movie that has won many awards in the Action Choreography sector. Besides the duel between Yen & Hung, other great fight scenes in this movie are the fight between Yen, Huang Xiaoming and a bunch of Hung's disciples in the wet market, the fight between Yen and other masters in Hung's fighting challenge, the fight between Hung and Twister, and the final fight between Yen and Twister in the boxing match.
The final appearance of Bruce Lee's character as a child, who wants to learn kung fu from Ip Man, gives a very promising follow-up for the third movie.
This is a Hong Kong martial arts movie at its best. (MJ)
