Just go get it - you won't be disappointed!

Rating: 10/10 (31 July 2010)

Being in the U.S., I had never heard of this movie, but checking today for something worthwhile to rent from Redbox.com, I kept seeing this movie in the inventory.
I couldn't figure it out - it was titled "Ip Man" but had a Chinese guy striking a martial arts pose on the DVD cover. Let me tell you - this movie has the most unfortunate coincidence that this historical character's real name probably most naturally conjures up in an English-speaking person's mind a techno sci-fi storyline about "I.P. Man."
Good thing I was curious enough about this "Ip Man" to search it out on IMDb here, be pleasantly surprised about its (current) 8.2/10 rating, and read all of the glowing reviews.
And all of the posted reviews here are correct - the fight scenes are varied and incredible, the storyline (although historically debatable in its entirety as filmed) is well-scripted for rousing drama, some humor, deference to traditional Confucian values about family, community, and country, and of course, amazing martial arts action.
From the very opening title frames, you can tell that this is not another one of your grade-B or C poorly-dubbed and shot chop-socky imports. The opening credits sequence is very classy and high quality in style, typeface, and accompanied by a driving, urgent, drum-based orchestral score that goes on to play a continuing emotionally rousing major role throughout the rest of the movie.
The first scenes in the movie itself are reassuring in their set design and decoration, the lighting, the cinematography, camera movement, costuming, and acting. You get the immediate impression that this is a high quality dramatic movie, and not just another quickly slapped-together excuse to string a lot of over-the-top martial arts scenes and slapstick comedy together with the barest of plot lines.
Be forewarned though since this is a native Chinese language film, if you don't speak the language, you're better off watching it with the original Chinese audio on and just reading the English subtitles. Turning the English audio dubbing on is very distracting because the vernacular slang they use just doesn't fit the more serious nature of the period and place (c'mon, do you really expect to call a young child "Kiddo" in a higher class family in 1930s China?).
One tip - on the rental DVD, in Set Up, choose the "English - Full Feature" option for Subtitles. Apparently, if you just choose the plain "English" subtitles option, it only gives English translations of things seen in Chinese in the movie but not the actors' actual dialogue, which obviously will be of very little use to the non-Chinese speaker.
True, there are a few minor fake-y bits here and there with a fighter stretching the realm of believability with a slightly-long jump or other acrobatic move, but nothing that will distract you from believing in the true artfulness and complexity of the execution of the wonderfully choreographed fight scenes. (You will find yourself going back again and again after the movie to replay the major fight scenes to just take in the artistic athleticism in those shots. Talk about how Ip Man uses opponents as human speed bags in a couple of pivotal fights!)
A few observations about the Extras that were on my rental DVD: (1)The director, the actors, the fight choreographer, everybody that was interviewed was just so unfailingly polite and complimentary of each other in that culturally Asian way; just kind of nice, although it bordered on the almost saccharine if they weren't so sincere about it; (2) When you watch the few deleted scenes that are included, you will agree that the director and/or editor made the right decisions because the movie and storyline played much better without them; (3)You will be somewhat surprised by how "tame" some of the actors who play some of the macho characters in the movie seem to be in real life; (4)And you will be quite surprised which actors had what level of martial arts experience coming into this film; you won't believe it based on what you see in the movie, especially with the amount of time they had to learn to get to that level of expertise
At the bottom of the DVD box, there is a tagline of "Mentor of Iconic Legend Bruce Lee." I predict that once this movie gets a wider audience through word-of-mouth and uniformly high ratings on here and other movie review sites, people will get to know who Ip Man really is, and he will no loner have to rely on his later historical connection to Bruce Lee to cement his rightful place in the martial arts superstars firmament. (In this movie, you get to see some of the dress and fighting moves that Bruce used in his iconic breakout movie, "Enter the Dragon." Maybe he was honoring Ip Man his teacher in that way?)
Bottom-line: If you like martial arts action movies, this is a no-brainer. If you like quality historical docu-dramas with rousing true life underdog patriotic heroes, get it. It packs an even larger emotional wallop if you're ethnic Chinese and know about the atrocities the Japanese committed against the Chinese people before WWII. And if your wife can stand a little blood and some violent martial arts (but nowhere near the blood, guts, and gore of typical R-rated movies these days), then she will probably like it too - the fighting scenes are appropriately driven by the drama, and Ip Man always sees fighting as the last resort. Plus the story is full-bodied involving the importance of family as well as doing the right and honorable thing as an individual.
10/10