The stuff of legend(s): Ip, Ip hurray!

Rating: 9/10 (9 August 2010)

"Bruce Lee was the progenitor of postmodern martial art," writes Davis Miller in THE TAO OF BRUCE LEE (a book I just happened across recently at the local library). Lee boxed in his younger days (photos and diary entries exist, one of the latter ending with "I won, but got blacked eye"), and later sparred using headgear and body armor to further develop his own personally tailored approach to martial arts. Yip Man, it's been said, sowed the seeds of Bruce Lee's Evolutionary approach to martial arts. IP MAN delves into none of this, although Bruce Lee's name is clearly an integral part of the ad campaign. Be that as it may, IP MAN is a solid action movie (as one might well expect, with Samo Hung doing the fight choreography), though I must confess I'm not a big fan (nor have I ever been) of wirework or cgi. (One of the distinctions between most of what Bruce Lee put on film and everything else was his insistence on BELIEVABLE martial arts. And, just for the record: the greatest fighter in the world isn't the guy who can tackle you and elbow you or choke you out by mounting you from behind: the greatest fighter in the world is the one fast enough of hand and foot to get in and gouge out your eyes before you can stop it. That said, a movie about the originator of wing chun- a woman- might be in order.) It's because of the wirework and cgi (not to mention the "speeded up" action so long so much a part of these movies) that I give IP MAN a 9 out of a possible 10.