Ip Man: The Final Fight

I am accustomed to Donnie Yen but this actor was not bad. This film shows Ip Man in his older years which was an interesting portrayal. His team of students was another highlight.

Well it can't be said for sure, if it's the last one, but it does feel like a closure to a series that has spawned for movies altogether. While the first two remain the best (with zero being the weak link in that chain, though there are always worse movies as I like to say), this is a fine addition and nice round up.

Not only do you have two fine (mature) actors opposite/side-to-side, you also have a story that is told. A story that tries to show us, that violence is not key. Don't worry though, there is plenty of great action scenes in it. It actually heightens those scenes, when you have something solid in between them, that makes you wait for them

Good that National Arts Films Production beat Ip Man 3 to the punch on the final chapter of Ip Man's saga. When Donnie Yen announced that he would not do another sequel to Ip Man, I thought what a pity. But now when I see Anthony Wong playing the Ip Man's part, maybe someone like him is a better cast for telling the twilight years of Ip Man's story.

The movie isn't going to be spectacular as Ip Man or Ip Man 2. You already know it from the cast. But it was good in its own ways because Anthony Wong's portrayal of the master was kind of spot on. Life in Hong Kong wasn't so easy in the '50s or '60s, and being an old man in that environment would have been hard even for a grand master of his caliber. The story integrates both Ip Man and Hong Kong pretty well. If there's a problem with this movie, story didn't flow as smoothly as it could have been, but finding story in Ip Man's old age probably wasn't so easy.

I would accept this movie as Ip Man 3. I don't know how good the real Ip Man 3 is going to be, but without Donnie Yen in the starring role, I'm sure it wouldn't have the high tension previous two movies had. As many have commented, this rush to capitalize on the Ip Man's popularity is getting to be passé. This movie was acceptable as the swan song to the saga of Ip Man.

• Features a more somber and human portrayal of Ip Man unlike its big blockbuster counterparts... and Anthony Wong deserves credit for the way in which he lives the character out.

• The dialogues were laughable at certain points; especially whenever Wing Chun was being discussed... It was as if the writers were too caught up with how cool they presumed Wing Chun to be, that they didn't realize how much of what they wrote came across as blatant Wing Chun propaganda.

• Everything about the final showdown (or "The Final Fight") felt tiresome:

* The lead up to it seemed forced; as if to find a way to end the movie with an all-out brawl, * The editing was too pacey and choppy, as if to compensate for lackluster fight choreography and * The choreography itself, which played out as such; good people who know Wing Chun vs bad people who don't know Wing Chun

• Also, the Bruce Lee "cameo" could've been avoided, or at least cast more accurately.

Overall, it's a movie that is unable to decide between the humanity and the action that involves the grandmaster; and therefore combines them both to do neither any justice.

I've spent the 1992 year in Beijing, People's Republic of China. While I was there to work as a foreign expert, I had the chance to work for China Films, where they were writing subtitles for Chinese movies which were exported to abroad customers. Most of the films were Kung Fu movies, and in all of them, the dialogues were so dumb it was laughable. it's not the case with this film. This a well-made movie, with nice battle scenes, but also with an interesting story about a real character. This Master of Wung Shin was the teacher of Bruce Lee. The story is going on from 1949 to the end of the 1960's. It's rather interesting. The version I've watched was in Cantonese, with subtitles, and I recommend it.