Franchise "Ip Man" is loved and revered by many fans of martial arts films, and the role of a teacher Bruce Lee without embellishment is a calling card Donnie Yen. The series is quite smooth, without obvious failures, although the bar of the first film is, of course, out of reach. I remember that someone involved in the creation of the fourth part said that the new Ip Man would be at the level of the original, which, of course, was hard to believe. There's nothing you can do, because people need to sell their product. In fact it turned out that "Ip Man 4" It doesn’t even reach the level of the second film, but it’s not as chaotic as the third.
In this film, Master Ip was brought to the USA by the will of the screenwriters. Of course, not because he wanted to travel in his old age, but for the sake of the future of his son, who has big problems with behavior at school. Apparently, a person like Ip Man cannot raise his child properly. It is clear that the son completely took after his father, since the latter, to be honest, was also not averse to having a fight or two. And to add drama, it was decided to reward the master with an incurable disease. It is not clear why the problem offspring had to be taken to America? There seem to be some answers to this question, but they are not very convincing.
Naturally, in the States, not everything goes smoothly for the master. He faces manifestations of racial intolerance on the part of the Americans towards the Chinese people on their land, and his fellow countrymen are not particularly willing to help due to the outrageous and inappropriate behavior of Bruce Lee, a student of Ip Man. The master's only salvation, so to speak, is his Wing Chun. Piece by piece, this fighting style solves almost any problem that arises for him and his family. So here he has to use his skills every now and then: either to protect a Chinese girl from bullies, or to compete with a master of another school, or to put arrogant American military officers in their place, single-handedly defending the honor and rights of the Chinese people on foreign soil. The real Ip Man, if he were alive, would begin to stutter nervously when he saw what adventures and hardships the scriptwriters had prepared for him.
There are no complaints about the action scenes, everything is done as it was in previous films, and despite the fact that some of the conflicts are very contrived, and in a couple of moments cables were used, they look great. Personally, I like the “flying fists” technique performed by Ip Man (I borrowed the name from the game Mortal Kombat 11, there was a similar technique), and here Donnie demonstrates it on the character Scott Adkins, although not particularly effective. In a real fight, I would bet on the latter to win, but cinema is cinema and our film is about Ip Man, and not about Barton Geddes. But as for me, the duel between Donnie Yen и Darren Shahlavi (“Ip Man 2”) turned out to be more interesting, even taking into account the fact that Darren’s character is just a boxer, not a kicker. That fight seemed more intense, longer and more difficult for Master Ip. Scott, by the way, appears only at the 52nd minute of the film, which disappointed me a little. I thought he would have more screen time. He plays the role quite adequately - he is a strong character.
There are several nuances that I could not understand. Firstly, there is the language barrier. Basically, this applies to the main character, and some tertiary characters. Still, without knowledge of the language there is nothing to do in a foreign country. Americans will definitely not learn Chinese in order to communicate with visitors. Secondly, the military Yankees in the film trample over karate and treat kung fu with contempt. But karate came from Japan. It may be a more applied martial art, but Americans talk about it as if it were their invention. Thirdly, how was the situation resolved between the Chinese diaspora and the migration service? History is silent about this.
Overall, the film is worthwhile, interesting, visually beautiful and stylishly shot. Donnie Yen great guy. I give him a pass and hope that "Ip Man. Final" (under this title the film was released in the USA) will truly become the finale of the entire franchise.
Sergey Volkolak
Especially for Fight-Films.info
Home » Reviews » Author's reviews »
Tags: Ip Man 4, Donnie Yen, Scott Adkins, Wilson Yip
Tags: Ip Man 4, Donnie Yen, Scott Adkins, Wilson Yip
Sounds like an epitaph. An indicator that it is really time to close the franchise.
I watched a movie the other day. As a film it is quite even, not a failure, but not outstanding either, and I have absolutely nothing more to say about it. I was glad to see Bruce Lee appear, but I liked the other film about Bruce, “Birth of the Dragon” from four years ago, much more.
In terms of combat, Ip Man 4 was a disappointment. All three previous films had fights that made me at least say "wow". In the third, there was a fight with a Muay Thai guy in an elevator, and there was a great wave with Mike Tyson; it was very interesting to watch how the small and light Chinese tried to pick up the key to a hundred-kilogram big man. The second featured both a fight with Shahlavi (who looked surprisingly big for his weight) and Samo Hung. There’s nothing to say about the first one - the fight with karatekas has already become a classic. But here... Well, yoma... Of course, Donnie Yen, Scott Adkins, they cannot fall below a certain standard, but this time they didn’t force me to weigh out a pack.
Something like that.