The famous Yuen
Woo-Ping, who directed “Master Z,” is back as fight coordinator here but passes
the job back to Wilson Yip, who worked every installment in the main series.
The fourth film, released in 2019, sets up a new generation. Set in the 1960s
around the time Ip Man’s actual student Bruce Lee (Kwok-Kwan Chan) was becoming
famous in America, the film is mainly set in San Francisco, where Ip Man hopes
to send his disturbed son Ching (Jim Liu) to school.
However, Ip Man has to
get past the Chinese Benevolent Association, whose boss, Wan Zong-hua, played
by Wu Yue, refuses to give Ip Man the recommendation letter needed to Chinese
immigrants to attend school in America. The problem: Wan and his coworkers
arent’ happy that Ip Man’s former student Bruce Lee wants to teach Chinese
martial arts to Americans. Padua compared, “Wan is sort of the equivalent of
the Sammo Hung figure in Ip Man 2; naturally, the adversaries end up uniting
forces to fight a common enemy.”
This brings us to
another problem. That common enemy is, you guessed it, American racism, which
hurts Wan’s daughter Yonah, played by Vanda Margraf, at school. The anti-Chinese
issue is also occurring in the army. US Marines staff sergeant Hartman Wu
(Vanness Wu) wants his fellow Marines to learn Wing Chun, but gunnery sergeant
Chun Barton Geddes (Scott Adkins) refuses, insisting that karate (invented by
the Japanese) is the superior martial arts.
Padua said, “The period
detail may be completely fictional, but the art direction and sweeping
camerawork makes for a romantic and convincing simulacrum of San Francisco’s
Chinatown in the 1960s. The conflict between ugly Americans and Chinese
immigrants is played a bit cartoonishly, but Yen as always is there to ground
the action in something like a recognizable human character. With his modest
frame and gentle demeanor, Yen comes off like a kung fu Jimmy Stewart, fighting
for the oppressed wherever he goes, and there’s a certain thrill from seeing
him stand up for Yonah when she’s bullied by her school’s star cheerleader and
her hockey stick wielding friends.”
Yen may be getting a
little old for the amazing fights of the earlier “Ip Man” movies, which fits
the character at this stage in his life: we see that at the beginning of the
film, this older Ip Man is diagnosed with cancer that will kill him, so his
martial arts are of a smart elder who, even more than usual, doesn’t believe in
any wasted movement. However, after fighting Mike Tyson in “Ip Man 3,” the
villain here isn’t as brilliant. Obviously, there’s agreement when Ip Man does
end up beating the racist gunnery sergeant, but somehow the stakes don’t seem
as high. Padua mentioned, “The Ip Man series has been a study in the tensions
between kung fu tropes and melodrama; it’s like each film has an inner battle
between the gritty underdog story of Rocky and the slick comic book jingoism of
Rocky IV.” For “Ip Man 4: The Finale,” the Chinese win again, but at the cost
of a fluency that is somewhat weakens the underdog narrative.
Don’t get me wrong,
this is a great end to the franchise and you should see it. I think it was
appropriate to end it off this way, especially since cancer is what killed off
the actual Ip Man. So if you want to see one more Ip Man movie, than you should
because you will love it, especially if you loved the previous movies.
This brings us to the
end of “Ip Man Month,” which I hope everyone has enjoyed my reviews of this
franchise. If you have seen the movies, great, and if not, then you should.
Stay tuned next month when, wait a minute, next month is October. You know what
that means….HALLOWEEN MONTH! Stay tuned for that because I will be finally
reviewing a franchise that I have wanted to review ever since I started this
marathon.
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