Originally Posted by
GeneChing
. 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.
Very well said Gene, especially the part about Donnie, he is such a superb MA that he can "sell" any system he puts his mind and body too.
Psalms 144:1
Praise be my Lord my Rock,
He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !