Film review of Yip man

Rating: 8/10 (13 May 2011)

IP man was directed by Wilson Yip in 2008, and the story was based on real person who was a expert of martial arts. A main character, IP man was one master of Southern Chinese traditional martial arts in 1930's. He had a great skill and always spending time to training. In addition, there were many masters of martial arts around him thus they were good friends and competitors as well. After that, it was happened the war between China and Japan and IP man and Chinese people lost their everything. One day, Japanese soldiers ask them to struggle as practicing martial arts with them and Chinese people accepted it because they can receive food as reward for their type winning. All of them were lost and one master who is IP man's friend was killed by a soldier because of disobeys of Japanese soldier. IP man finished all of Japanese soldiers by his martial arts and then he became a hero among Chinese. Top of Japanese soldier likes his style of martial arts and he asked him to join the group of Japanese but he disagrees with his request. Finally, they decided to fight to recognise which is stronger between Chinese martial arts or Karate in front of all of Chinese people and Japanese soldiers.
The main point of IP man is that the main character of IP man actually existed. In addition, the genre is action movie with including historical own martial arts. The background of the film was in Southern China and IP man was a master who did not have his training students and room even he was professional about his martial arts. China has many types of traditional martial arts and the martial arts which IP man was training, was one of famous martial arts. The story is carrying on his basic story. I do not know IP man and Japanese soldier fight in front of many people as last scene but audience may be overwhelmed with emotion when they watch it because they can get feeling if they know IP man was existed in the past. Normally, action movies are complete fiction but IP man is mixing non-fiction and fiction thus it provides to audience to be more realistic and fantasy. Also, it is unique compared with ordinary action films because of mixing. Chinese martial arts have long history and we cannot distinguish but we can see the style of Chinese martial arts by action and it will make us to be more exciting and audience may concentrate their attention on the film scenes. Therefore, audience will know more about IP man and the history of Chinese martial arts because of movie with action.
Secondly, IP man shows Chinese culture identity to audience such as traditional culture, background and customs. The main scenes were action with IP man and his martial arts was traditional Chinese martial arts thus I think his politeness was basically in traditional culture and his acting which he try to fight with someone, was particular behaviour compared to other martial arts so audience can notice what Chinese martial arts is by IP man. The background of IP man was historical Chinese views so there are only Chinese traditional buildings and landscapes and also they were wearing traditional Chinese clothes. It shows audience Chinese culture identity. The film was also appeared Japanese people with Chinese and two of them has own martial arts and I believe that this point is effective to audience to watch it. IP man used his Chinese martial arts and Japanese soldier used Karate which is Japanese traditional martial arts. Their martial arts clothes were different and the acting of martial arts was also unlike. Through the scene, I think the director wanted to show audience how Chinese and Japanese martial arts are different and it is good chance to show audience about Chinese traditional martial arts. According to the story, the film could show Chinese culture identity as well.
In conclusion, IP man was released in 2008 and the story of the film was located in the China-Japan war and included to Chinese traditional martial arts. Through the movie, audience could find what hero is and how were different between Chinese martial arts and Karate by their actions. I think the movie was effective to audience because it is a chance to show historical Chinese culture and also we can find history between China and Japan. I could recognise and notice about the side of Chinese, Chinese customs and Chinese society when I watched it as foreign audience.