Classic Revenge Story Done Right

Rating: 10/10 (12 August 2018)

This is the best kung fu movie I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them, including, of course, all of Bruce Lee's movies.
What Bruce Lee's movies always lacked, this movie has - proper motivation for the lead actor. Bruce Lee fought for...let's just call them trivial...reasons. In his handful of great martial arts movies, he fought for:

The honor of his fighting style over other fighting styles
A restaurant troubled by hooligans
Someone breaking his mother's amulet
Victory in an illegal martial arts tournament

Nothing too heavy there. But Ip Man is next-level stuff. The backdrop is the Japanese invasion of China in WWII. The occupiers are heartless and cruel, the occupied starving, treated as slaves. The peace-loving Ip Man, who lives by Confucian principles, is drawn into conflict with the invaders against his will, and every fight is important for its own reason. You will find yourself cheering for Ip Man not because he's a great character, though he is; but because his motivation is your motivation.
The action sequences are just terrific. You want your hero to be invincible, and he is, in the most satisfying way possible.
This is a great movie and I highly recommend it, even for people who aren't into the martial arts genre.