Ip Man 2 (2011, Hong Kong)

Director: Wilson Yip   Starring: Donnie Yen, Lynn Hung, Simon Yam

The second installment of Wilson Yip and Donnie Yen’s collaboration to tell the life story of the legendary Wing Chun master Ip Man is a film ripe with promise. Sadly, it fails to realise its potential, especially when compared to the first installment. This doesn’t mean it is necessarily a bad film, it isn’t, but it certainly has more serious issues than its predecessor all of which detract from the experience.

Taking up the tale after Master Ip has moved to a post-war Hong Kong, on his uppers after losing his former wealth and property to the Japanese occupation and dedicating his energies into opening his own Wing Chun school. Slowly he builds a following of pupils but hits a stumbling block in the shape of the cartel of other Hong Kong schools who force him to fight them to prove he is worthy of being part of the Hong Kong martial arts scene. All this rivalry is set to one side though in the face of Western oppressors in the form of the British and so Ip Man has to fight for the cultural pride of the Chinese (again).

The earlier parts of the film are actually rather good. Once he establishes his school Master Ip finds himself challenged by local youths who want to see if he is worthy of being their teacher. These fight scenes, in his rooftop Kwoon (school) are excellent. Similarly, he finds himself having to help his students out of run ins with rival schools which are equally good. It’s when he attracts the attention of the local Masters that things start to go a bit awry.

Rather than the tight, dramatic fighting demonstrated previously this signals a change in style that would feel acceptable in some Kung Fu movies but feels out of place here. The obvious issue is the over-reliance on wire work during the challenges from the other Masters where there’s a bit of Kung Fu flying going on and faintly preposterous feats of acrobatics. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against wire work when employed appropriately (see Once Upon A Time In China, The Legend Of Fong Sai Yuk, House Of Flying Daggers for examples of this) but here it seems utterly inappropriate and damages the credibility of the story. What should be an interesting drama becomes a pantomime and any sense that you are watching a film based on real events is destroyed.

It gets worse with the Chinese tradition versus Western colonialism last act where some hideous overacting, one dimensional characterisation and a somewhat poor fight scene where Ip Man must defeat a champion boxer to prove the racial and cultural superiority of the Chinese comes across as rather infantile propaganda. This is the real drawback of the film as it doesn’t seem relevant to anything else. Personally I would have preferred to see a well thought out drama following Master Ip’s struggle to establish himself with the closed world of Hong Kong martial arts without the tacked on national pride element.

Ultimately it failed to meet my expectations although this is largely due to them being rather high after the first film. Compared to the irksome Ip Man: The Legend Begins (effectively a prequel covering his early years training under Chan Wah Shun) it is a work of genius and historical accuracy but it is still a bit of a let down. It definitely left me yearning for the Wong Kar Wai film of Ip Man’s life which has been languishing in development hell for a long time but looks like it may see the light of day by the beginning of next year. A ten year labour of love by one of Asia’s greatest directors it should be something really special. In the meantime, this will have to do.