The Legend Is Born: Ip Man (2010)

Let's be realistic.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

When Ip Man and Ip Tin-chi (Ip-Man's adopted brother) were still young, their father persuaded Chan Wah-shun (Sammo Hung) to teach them Wing Chun so as they can defend themselves. Not long laterm Ip Man's father passes away and they stay at the martial arts centre with Chan Wah-shun and the rest of the practitioners. There, they befriend with Lee Mai- wai, who practices Wing Chun.However, Chan Wah-shun's illness has become worse and his departure was too soon. Ip Man (To Yu-hang) and his brother, Ip Tin-chi (Fan Siu-Wong) continues to learn Wing Chun from their senior, Ng Chung-sok (Yuen Biao), before leaving Foshan to study in Hong Kong at St. Stephen's College.In Hong Kong, Ip Man and his schoolmates are insulted by a racist British (Andy Taylor). Ip Man wants him to swallow his words, but the British continues to slur them in mandarin. Ip Man challenge the British to a duel and defeats him, and they become friends. Ip Man's popularity soar after the incident.Ip Man meets Master Leung Bik (Ip Chun) while trying to buy medicine for his British friend. Leung Bik is the son of Master Leung Jan, Chan Wah- shun's teacher. Ip Man exchange blows and techniques with Leung Bik but was defeated and he learns a different, improved style of Wing Chun from Leung Bik to improve his skill. Meanwhile in Foshan, Ip Tin-chi rose to become a prominent businessman under another Wing Chun martial arts association.Years later, Ip Man returns and reunites with his friends at the martial arts centre. His brother, Ip Tin-chi is excited to see him that the two exchange blows and Ip Tin-chi sees a different pattern that is different from the original Wing Chun. Ng Chung-sok, who was there saw Ip Man has mastered a new style of Wing Chun from Leung Bik, which differs from Chan Wah-shun's orthodox style. Ip Man is punished for learning a different style.Soon, Ip Man falls in love with Cheung Wing-shing (Huang Yi), the daughter of the vice-mayor of Foshan, Cheung Ho-tin (Lam Suet). When Lee Mei-wai (Hins Cheung) found that Ip Man loves Cheung, she accepts Ip Tin-chi's love and marries him.On their wedding night, her godfather is murdered and Ip Man is arrested as a prime suspect after being witnessed struggling with him. Cheung Wing-shing went to the police department and lied that Ip Man was with her the entire evening to have him released on bail. Lee Mei-wai discovers a letter to Ip Tin-chi, regarding the assassination of her godfather. She was saved by Ip Tin-chi when she attempted suicide and they tried to leave for Foshan but were caught by the Japanese authorities. The pregnant Lee Mei-wai is captured and Ip Tin-chi is forced to kill Ng Chung-sok because Lee Mei-wai showed the letter to him.At the martial arts centre, Ng Chung-sok was defeated by Ip Tin-chi and Kitano Yumi (Bernice Liu). Ip Man arrives in time to save Ng Chung-sok from being killed and then defeat the Japanese and Ip Tin-chi. Ip Tin- chi reveals that he is actually a Japanese named Tanaka Eiketsu, who was sent to China from a very young age to work as an undercover agent. He performs seppuku to end his life.Ip Man rushes off to the pier to rescue Lee Mei-wai. He defeats the Japanese mastermind and rescues her. At the pier, they discover that the Japanese have been smuggling Japanese children to China, possibly as future undercover agents, similar to Ip Tin-chi.Ng Chung-sok is seen narrating the story of the night to new apprentices at the martial arts association. Ip Man's son, Ip Chun, is seen among the new apprentices. Ip Man arrives back at the association and is shown married to Cheung Wing-shing.

The Legend is Born: Ip Man is a lame, uninspired, cheap knockoff of the Wilson Yip Ip Man movies. It has absolutely no heart, soul, or emotion whatsoever. Why is it so bad? Let's take a look and rip it apart!Firstly, let's take a look at our protagonist, Ip Man played by Dennis To. In the first two films, Donnie Yen played Ip Man with a charm and sincerity with him that makes us like him and root for him throughout the film. In contrast, Dennis To's Ip Man is awkward, stiff, and stoic throughout. He lacks charisma and only seems to have one expression on his face the entire time. It's obvious they only picked him just because he resembled Donnie Yen a lot. He's pretty much the Brandon Routh of Ip Man. I'll give him credit for doing some decent kung-fu here but throughout the film, I just wanted Donnie Yen back.Secondly, the story is GOD-AWFUL in this film. The first half of this film is pretty much just a summary of Ip Man's early life where he learns Wing Chun, meets Leung Bik, falls in love etc. The second half has a lame evil Japanese plot again. The first half features WAY too many unnecessary fight scenes. Every character Ip Man meets, is a violent douchebag who wants to fight him for no good reason! The second half is just racist and boring! I'm honestly quite sick of this " evil Japanese " trope in kung-fu movies. It comes off a lot of the times as overly patriotic and racist. All in all, the story of this movie was terrible and it's obvious the writers did not give a sh!t while writing this film.Are there any good things about this movie? Sure. The fight choreography is a refreshing change of pace from the Wilson Yip films. In those movies, Ip Man is nearly superhuman in his speed and reflexes but here, the fights are a little more grounded in reality. And Yuen Biao does a good job here. That's it for the positive, I think.Overall, The Legend is Born: Ip Man is just a product meant to make a sh!t ton of money and nothing more. I'm gonna give it a 3/10.

This prequel is better than the sequel. Martial arts world champion YO Yu-Hang in no way suffers in comparison with Donny Yan in skill, and is more authentic. Yan's Wing Chun is serviceable at a distant shot but falls apart in close-ups. A close-up in the first Ip Man showing his wife treating his bruised fist reveals all too clearly how completely ignorant (or inattentive) the movie makers are to the glaring fact that Wing Chun and karate use entirely different parts of the fist to strike opponents.The screenplay is penned by Erica Lee, prolific romance author, best utilizing her forte in handling that department of the script. The story is very much fictionalized which actually works to its advantage, making the script more self-contained than the previous two movies.Participation of 86-year-old IP Chun, the Masters own son further brightens up the movie, in both the role he plays and the way he delivers it. Despite the turn-of-20th-century setting, female lead HUANG Yi is pretty in a very contemporary way and great to watch. The familiar support cast is good, particularly FAN Siu-wong, veteran martial art actor playing Ip Man's adopted brother.Ip Man fan are no doubt eagerly awaiting WONG Kar-wai's rendering of the Master's legend starring LEUNG Chiu-wai, scheduled for release in December 2010.

"The Legend Is Born: Ip Man" is a film which chronicles Ip Man in his teenage years which focuses much on his learning of Wing Chun. The film is a prequel to the previous two Ip Man films which starred Donnie Yen as the titular character of Ip Man. Now, the star has been changed and the film has gotten a different style.First, let me tell you about the cast. The cast choosing here in this movie can be called really bizarre. Dennis To who became a temporary minor antagonist on "Ip Man 2" became the teenage titular character in this prequel. That totally got me shocked. It's so rare to see such happening. Then, we have some of the same cast used in the previous Ip Man films on a different role such as Sammo Hung (plays the teacher of the teenage Ip Man) and Louis Fan (plays the brother of Ip Man). That was really confusing. But, something surprised me. A character named Leung Bik was played by the son of Ip Man no other than Ip Chun. Secondly, there are quite a lot of perspectives. There are around six perspectives here which really got me confused. There's one from Ip Man, then one for his brother, his love, his other jealous love and the enemy. It really got my mind turning around. Next, the special effects were kind of cheesy. There were two scenes that showed a train leaving somewhere to somewhere. You know that those trains produce smoke. The smoke was pretty fake as it didn't suit the background. It was not good.The acting of the characters. Not bad. Dennis To on Ip Man was not bad at all. The others were also normal. Just like a normal movie. The emotions were well acted by the actors.Then we have the action scenes. They were also well directed. But, I still say the previous two films related to Ip Man still had better action scenes than this prequel. The moves were less cooler than the previous two pictures. But, it's not really cheesy. Not a problem.This movie has a different style. It has a different theme. "Ip Man" and "Ip Man 2" had the theme where the people were seeking freedom (although "Ip Man 2" was not totally about seeking freedom). Whereas, this movie has a different theme of love. For me, the freedom theme from the previous two films is only a small percent of the film. The directing and division of the emotional moments are also differently set. There's also another confusing thing. If you've watched "Ip Man" and "Ip Man 2", you might notice that the titular character of Ip Man doesn't know English at all. He didn't even speak any word in English language. But, in this PREQUEL, he is able to speak English quite fluently. He also spoke to an English or American person in this movie. That was strange and that totally made my mind confused too.Well, the movie provided some sad moments too. But, they were not so sad, they were only like 40% sad moments for me. But, if you're easy to cry, you might want to just provide a piece of tissue in case you have tears flowing down your face.The movie is different from the previous two Ip Man related films. I say this is worse than the previous ones. I'm not really satisfied with the result of the film. The previous films were much better than this. But, this movie might just entertain you with its action scenes. I half- heartedly recommend you this movie. It's still entertaining to be watched and not really a waste of time. 6 stars for this movie.