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YIP Man (15)
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Dir. Wilson Yip, China, 2009, 106mins
Cast: Donnie Yen, Simon Yam, Siu-Wong Fan
Review by Christopher Upton
Anyone with even a passing interest in martial arts is aware of Bruce Lee. He made some of the most memorable kung-fu movies around and became a worldwide celebrity, influencing millions along the way. Look at the Kill Bill saga for further proof of this. But obviously behind all great men lies a teacher, and Lee’s tutor was quite possibly the best in the world. Master Ip was the first man to bring the close combat martial arts technique, Wing Chun, to an open forum and this was what he taught to Lee.
Ip Man (Yen) honed his technique in China before the Japanese occupation in the Second World War. The film focuses on how he used his skills to symbolically stand up to the Japanese during periods of internment. Up until this point the unassuming Ip had never given classes and only fought behind closed doors to avoid causing embarrassment to his opponents. However once he sees his family hungry and his friends murdered, it isn’t long before Ip gets involved and must publicly fight the emperor to prove the superiority of Chinese martial arts over Japanese.
This film pretty much swept the board at the Hong Kong Film Awards earlier this year, scoring best picture and best choreography, and a sequel is already in the pipeline. Its success is unlikely to be repeated over here but it there is undoubtedly an audience for this darker than most depiction of Chinese martial arts.
The fighting is inventive – as in one fight sequence, where a sword is substituted for a feather duster – and the film also has the added bonus of being extremely cathartic. You can’t help but cheer for Ip, when, after seeing his once flourishing home town destroyed, his family made destitute and his friends dying, he storms into the arena and takes out the Japanese fighting force.
The historical accuracy of the piece is questionable, and it’s difficult to know how much of this film is actually a truthful biopic and how much of it was made up for purposes of storytelling. You don’t really need to think about this though, when there is such expert choreography on show- choreographed by none other than Bruce Lee’s friend and TV cop Sammo Hung. And what’s more impressive is that this is a kung fu film that manages to be entertaining without feeling the need to cram in fight scene after fight scene. It has the strength to let the story carry it.
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