I give it a hearty thumbs up
Some good action sequences for sure. As to it's authenticity to Wing Chun, well, Wing Chun people argue about authenticity of the different lineages so much that there's no way a movie would satisfy them. I'd say it's more authentic than Michelle Yeoh's Wing Chun (ironically also starring Donnie) but not nearly as authentic as Prodigal Son. Still, if you want to see authenticity of kung fu, you shouldn't be looking for it in the movies. Same goes for the story. This is not a documentary. It's highly fictionalized, like Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. It's entertainment, not history.
That being said, it was very entertaining. The first half of the film was well paced with lots of fun fights. What I like about Donnie is that he really adopts different styles in his films. If you look at Bruce, Jackie, Jet, or even Jaa now, they each have a signature style of fighting that's uniquely their own. You can see others trying to emulate that. Donnie goes the other way. He's a total chameleon when it comes to choreography. In this film, he blends wirework and some solid cinematography into a Wing Chun homage. Donnie acts with his body better than with his face. He even adopts the head-forward stoop that Ip Man has in photos (not sure if that was a product of age or his practice). I felt the second part of the film got a bit too melodramatic, somewhat failing to deliver on the action-packed promise of the earlier scenes. But in the end, it was satisfactory.
Donnie is painfully cool as Ip Man. He's the ultimate martial hero in the true sense of wuxia. Wing Chun should be proud that their grandmaster was depicted in such a glorious light. Is Ip Man the new Wong Feihung? Perhaps.
The sets were magnificent in detail and the style really seemed to capture the period (although I can't imagine old China was quite so clean ever). Many of the scenes used different color washes, often sepia tones, while picking up certain colors and amplifying them through special effects. It was akin to that classic red jacket scene in Schindler's List, but it worked in this film to give the feeling of vintage hand-painted photos of the period. It got a little overdone in some parts for me, but it worked overall.
My favorite part was to see Shi Xingwu in a very different role than he's played before. He was Coolie in Kung Fu Hustle and a villain Flashpoint. He's also a former Shaolin monk from the Wushuguan who I met in 1995. It was good to see him play a good guy.