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 and Ip Man 3.
Ip Man 3 begins where Ip Man 2 ends with a teaser about the future relationship between Ip Man and Bruce Lee, but if you come to either film expecting any more than a couple of scenes devoted to the legendary relationship, walk on by and watch something else because you won’t get satisfied here. Fortunately I came to these movies with zero expectations, but it seems like an unforgiveable tease for viewers who want more.
Unlike its predecessors, I couldn’t even pretend that Ip Man 3 may have even a passing resemblance to reality and completely abandons any pretense that it is a biopic or period piece although it claims to cover Ip Man’s life from 1959 through 1960 in Hong Kong. Ip Man 3 feels nakedly like only a martial arts film helmed by your friendly neighborhood vigilante, now deputized by the only supporting character that was not in the first film and was in the second. A school is in jeopardy because an American, played by Mike Tyson, who may be a boxing champion, but is not an actor, wants to buy the land. Why? I have no idea. There are a couple of subplots including a young, single father who wants to challenge the titular character as the real leader of Wing Chun, but Ip Man has more pressing concerns in his personal life. Will Ip Man retain his title and save the neighborhood school?
Ip Man 3’s story is weak sauce, but Donnie Yeun and Lynn Hung emotionally tie it all together, and as much as I hate to admit it, the love story makes this third installment feel like a more faithful, character successor to the first installment than the second. He is still unpaid and working tirelessly for his community so when he finally takes a day off to spend more time with his family, and everyone loudly talks crap about him, it is hard not to empathize with his character’s plight. How are you complaining about him not showing up if you’ve never paid him!?! Live your best life and date your spouse! It is about time that you just chilled out like you used to before the Japanese invaded. In the second and third films, Ip Man is called an old man, and here is where Yeun can’t win. He may be acting his ass off by downplaying his physical prowess, using his weight and body as if he is Christian Bale and retaining an innate likeability despite kicking everyone’s butts, but whenever another character calls him an old man, it just takes me right out of the movie. He has not aged a day!
Ip Man 3 seems a little cynical as if it was thinking more about marketability than making a good film. Every storyline is in service to sentimentality and getting to the next memorable fight. Ip Man has a ton of nameless, unmemorable younger disciples. It feels as if there was supposed to be a larger subplot involving one of the lead disciples and a fetching schoolteacher, but it gets abandoned on the cutting room floor. The casting of Jin Zhang, while effective, also seemed like a ploy to get a handsome good bad boy to pull in the ladies because regardless of how hot Yuen is in real life, he downplays it as Ip Man. There are plenty of screaming kids and ladies in jeopardy with not a lot separating them from trite scenes of tying a woman across the train tracks. It is so cheesy complete with an evil American land developer who later gets elected President. Oh wait, no, that is real life. Forget it. I’m getting my storylines confused.
I do think that Ip Man 3 was trying to shake up the established storyline from the first and second films of having 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. Instead none of the villains are that bad once you get to know them, which makes the movie feel like a lot of hullabaloo was ultimately over nothing, just conflicting motivations that could have been solved earlier. This movie went from rampant gang warfare on the helpless denizens of Hong Kong to private, low key fights that no one sees except us. No big international tournaments for you!
Tyson’s story line is ultimately anticlimactic though it feels like an unofficial reprise to Jin’s storylines from the first and second film and an ultimately better man than Sammo Hung’s master. I’m assuming the kid on the tricycle is his? On one hand, as an American, I feel as if symbolically we got off easy by Tyson not representing the larger threat that America poses to China as an unofficial imperialist trying to dominate, but on the other hand, I miss the larger symbolism set up by the first two movies in the Ip Man franchise. Maybe it is still there, but Tyson’s final scenes come off as so affable and ultimately decent that at the end of the movie, I wondered if he just hired crappy underlings who were too extra and zealous with implementing his orders. Either that or Chinese filmmakers are more diplomatic than Presidon’t and are suggesting that Americans and Chinese can get along once they appreciate and recognize each other’s strengths and boundaries. (I’m giving the movie too much credit.)
Ip Man 3 feels more like if filmmakers had to cut a CW series about a family man vigilante into a feature film because the pilot wasn’t accepted after all, but they still had the option to make back its money. Viewers may actually enjoy this film more if you never saw the first two, but if you did see the first two, I would not be surprised if you were a little disappointed. Even though the quality of the stories is going down, I still plan to see Ip Man 4 if it appears in a theater near me because the fight scenes are great, and Yeun is an affable leading man in the martial arts film industry.