Ip Man

Based (loosely... very loosely) on the life story of Ip Man, a martial arts master who goes from wealth and reputation to poverty after the Japanese invasion of 1938... though who is determined to keep his honour and deny the invaders his help.

The film is essentially in two parts; the first part introduces the characters in pre-war times when the area was wealthy and martial arts schools opened up specifically because people had money to spend and spare time. Ip Man, the quiet master of the Wing Chun style of martial arts (which was an exceedingly rare style compared to others), is seen to be independently wealthy and doesn't even have to open a school to support his wife, child, large house and "eat, relax and practice martial arts" lifestyle. The introductions to all the characters is performed very well and by showing us rather than by simply telling us what they are like so we really feel we know these people through their actions and interactions by the time we reach the next part of the film. Of course this 'showing us' in a town famous for martial arts schools and proud masters, and quite rightly for the tone of the film, involves plenty of hand-to-hand fighting scenes.

The second part of the film is set a very short time later after the 1938 Japanese invasion when, by total contrast, the local populace must struggle even to eat. For martial artists there is a way, however, as a Japanese 'commander' sets Japanese martial arts against Chinese ones in competition with a bag of rice as the prize for each victory. We see how each of the characters we met pre-war has reacted to the invasion and get caught up in this competition, leading to Ip Man revealing his prowess but refusing to teach his skills to the invading army troops and ending, of course, in the (totally fictional) fight between himself and the Japanese master/commander... still, having him move away until after the war really wouldn't have made for a very exciting climax!

The film is very much based on the 'style' or 'spirit' of Ip Man's life rather than being a documentary but it does that job very well indeed giving us interesting three-dimensional characters (though the Japanese, except for the commander, are seen mostly as cyphers for brutality as is common in Hong Kong movies), excellent and plentiful fight scenes and an immersive (if not always accurate) story aided by the very real historical backdrop of the war.
Donnie Yen as Ip Man especially gets to use his acting skills as well as his fighting ones.

Technically too the film excels with skilled camera work, direction (by Wilson Yip, with Sammo Hung as action director) and editing for the fight scenes all of which are incredibly well performed, with effective impact close-ups and wire work intervention kept to a minimum. The wire stuff is only really to stop people really being thrown dangerously across rooms or to help them accomplish the most difficult acrobatic moves rather than the almost 'flying' powers portrayed in some more fantastical interpretations.
The film also makes great use of sound and very clever use of a number of different colour palettes to indicate and imply moods throughout which is very effective in a subtle way.

Overall a fine feast for the eyes and a good story well acted means Ip Man should be high on the list of any martial arts film fan's list... and also on the list of any fan of decent action drama for that matter.

The Blu-Ray Disc (UK - Region Free)
An excellent 1080p picture backed up with DTS HD MA 5.1 sound gives a great experience to the watcher who has a set up that will appreciate it... in this case this means you will need DTS decoder to get the most out of the sound (otherwise you will probably either have to listen to it down-converted to stereo from the DTS signal or via the 2.0 Dolby Digital stream also present on the disc).
Note that both audio tracks are in Cantonese and there is no English dubbed soundtrack on this disc, but obviously there are English subtitles, which I found well timed and I 'felt' we mostly accurate!

The DVD replaces the DTS Master Audio track with a 5.1 Dolby Digital one and is Region 2 locked.

Additional material on the disc comprises a set of making of featurettes, set design featurettes, interviews, deleted scenes, trailers and a look at the gala premiere. It also includes a featurette tracing the patch from Ip Man to Bruce Lee (who he later went on to teach) which is exclusive to this UK releases. Note that all the extras do have English subtitles!

The only reason to go for another region's release is if you want the option of a dubbed English 5.1 track available on the US release (you will need a Region A capable Blu-Ray player for this as it is region locked) or Mandarin as an alternative to Cantonese which is available on some region's releases.