Ip needs manners

Rating: Null/10 (30 June 2011)

IP MAN is one of those patriotic - jingoistic even - films about historical Chinese defeats which create a fictional tournament in which an underdog Chinese can symbolically defeat foreigners using martial arts, thereby restoring Chinese honour. This time it's Ip Man, the trainer of Bruce Lee, who takes on northern bandits and the invading Japanese in 1930s China. The story is predictable but that's the norm for martial arts flicks. What sinks this one is just how perfect Ip Man is. He's so great that even though the fights feature admirable technique by Donnie Yen, they're drama free because the outcome is never in doubt. Similarly, nothing shakes the man, leading to the glorious moment when he announces to his wife, who is dying of starvation after the Japanese stole their house, that he will get a job -- did this not occur to him earlier? To add insult to injury, it ends with a text crawl which tries to claim that the Japanese defeat in 1945 was due to the Chinese (because Ip Man inspired them) which is as shameless as it is ahistorical.