After I saw Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and loved it, many people asked me if I saw Ip Man. I hadn’t even heard of it, which shocked people, but hey, I’m only one person. I put any movie with Ip Man in the title in my queue and still knew nothing about the movies. When one of those movies was about to expire on Netflix, one that had nothing to do with Donnie Yuen’s then trilogy, now quadrilogy (another Ip Man film will be released in 2019), I decided to finally buckle down and watch all the movies in one sitting naturally starting with Ip Man shortly followed by Ip Man 2.
Like Ip Man, Ip Man 2 is not just any martial arts film. It is also a bio pic and period piece which is loosely based on the life story of the titular character, Bruce Lee’s instructor. It covers 1950 through 1956 and unfolds in Hong Kong, which Ip Man fled to in 1949. Like most sequels, it is not as strong as the initial installment though it is still appealing. Because of the titular character’s humbler circumstances, it is not as sumptuous a period piece.
Unlike Ip Man, Ip Man 2 does not work as well as a standalone movie because it references a lot of the events from the first movie. Also I’m not sure that I would be as interested or invested in the titular character if I was not already familiar with him and his accomplishments from the first movie, especially since this film cedes some of the spotlight to other supporting characters in order to develop the final showdown. I was not invested in the most of the new supporting characters except the policeman, and my sentiments seem to be echoed by the film since most of them don’t reappear in the subsequent third film. I was pleased that characters from the first film reappear in this one, but they did not play as pivotal role in the overall story as I would have preferred and seemed to be there as comic relief or window dressing.
Like the first movie, Ip Man is still depicted as the epitome of being a Chinese man. He is even more of a devoted family man than the first film and still respectful of women. He is humble and generous, strong and restrained, peaceful but willing to defend others. He is simultaneously a relatable everyman facing difficult circumstances during an occupation by a barbaric foreign power, but also the ideal because he acts in the noblest possible way regardless of the circumstances. Even his flaws are admirable. Unlike the first film, he isn’t hiding any more and wants to build on the reputation that he established in Foshan, but now he is the underdog in two ways. He is a country mouse in the big city, and the British dominate the big city. Can he root out corruption and unify the Chinese people against the British?
It appears that each Ip Man movie has two villains: a minor one that is not so bad and under different circumstances, could be a decent person and a major one that is so repugnant that he must be completely defeated to restore the dignity of those whom Ip Man defends. Unsurprisingly because this film is set in Hong Kong, the major villain is a British boxer, Twister. I’m sorry, but the British don’t make as good a villain as the Japanese during World War II. The stakes are getting shot and killed versus being humiliated and accidentally killed because you’re out of shape and have no business getting in any ring. Even though I haven’t seen the original Rocky versus Drago, it felt like that the story got lifted and dumped in this time period. You will have to decide who wore it better if you saw both movies. I just never bought that Ip Man couldn’t beat this Goliath, and it was a crucial plot point. I feel like a martial artist could beat any boxer regardless of how physically imposing that boxer is in comparison to the martial artist. Please feel free to correct me because I could be wrong.
Culturally Ip Man 2 had the potential to be a stronger story than its predecessor because the choice is more morally textured and about going along to get along and the line between playing the system and being complicit could have been teased out whereas an invasion is fairly simple, and it is about survival, but this movie failed to sustain the complex thread throughout the film. I did enjoy that within the denouement fight, it is obvious that those who make the rules purposely create them not out of a sense of fairness, but to insure that the rules favor them.
The British actors were dreadful. Like any foreign film, if the viewer is an English speaker and doesn’t know the languages being spoken, you can believe that the acting is good so maybe the Japanese actors were dreadful, but I didn’t know any better so I found them suitably intimidating. When the actors speak English and are British, an English-speaking viewer accustomed to the finest British acting cannot ignore that the acting is glaringly bad.
I enjoyed Ip Man 2 and as a completist, I recommend it to anyone interested in martial arts films, especially if you’re shockingly ignorant like me and did not know of Donnie Yuen before Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and saw Ip Man, but Ip Man takes a back seat as a character and is more of a symbol and icon. Unlike the first film, the drama takes a back seat to the fighting and the character development of the main character is almost nonexistent.