Considering it’s Chinese New Year, I thought it would be appropriate to do a review of a Chinese movie this time around.

Everyone’s heard of Bruce Lee. Some have heard of the martial art he created, called Jeet Kune Do. Fewer still know he trained Wing Chun before he became a star and developed JKD. The movie Ip Man is about the man who taught Bruce Lee Wing Chun. And that man’s name was Ip Man (pronounced Eeep Mun).

Being a biographical movie, Ip Man doesn’t contain a lot of the characteristics that define your usual historical Chinese movie. For a start, not everybody dies. It starts just before the (Second) Sino-Japanese War of 1937. (Now, I’ll just digress a bit and say that this moment, in my opinion, is the start of World War Two. But, of course, you only have the largest war ever conducted in Asia that only ended with Japan’s capitulation in 1945 to the Allied Forces, so it’s not like it’s important historically or anything.)

A lot of care was taken with the sets, and it shows. They are evocative and sumptuous, and give a wonderful atmosphere of the time in Fo Shan (Fushan), a city in Guandong province situated on the Pearl River Delta. Ip Man is a Chinese aristocrat living in the prosperous trade-based city and so has much time to devote to the training of Wing Chun. He has a wife and a young son and, despite being an aristocrat, is a polite and humble man. In Fo Shan is a Martial Arts Street, where instructors set up their kwoons. But, before they can open their establishment, it is tradition that each new instructor “exchange views” with Ip Man behind closed doors, and we see part of the action when a new instructor approaches him and, later, when a Wushu grand master from northern China also challenges him, sneering at Ip Man that he can’t know much because Wing Chun is a woman’s martial art. (The challenger is correct. Wing Chun was supposedly created by a Buddhist nun called Ng Mui, but this may be apocryphal.) Of course, Ip Man beats the crap out of him. Great stuff.

Everything continues swimmingly, until the Japanese invade. Driven from their home, Ip Man and his family are reduced to paupers, and Ip Man makes a small living by acting as a coolie for a nearby mine. The Japanese leading officer of the region, General Miura, trains in Wushu (another branch of Chinese martial arts) and makes it a point to pit Chinese sifu (teachers) against his men and watch them fail. Inevitably, he and Ip Man meet.

There are plots and sub-plots in this movie that would take too long to explain, so let’s deconstruct it in a way that’s less narrative.

The fight scenes. Oh. My. God. Some of the best I have ever seen, thanks to Action Director and veteran martial arts actor Sammo Hung, choreographer Leung Siu-Hung and with input from Ip Man’s son, Ip Chun. The differences between the Wushu and Wing Chun styles are shown beautifully and there’s only a little use of the wires that enable the actors to fly through the air. (I find their use a bit tiresome, to be honest.) The fly in the ointment was the Japanese, who used the standard karate “greeting”, then went on to fight Chinese boxing rather than karate. (J was totally confused, having come from a karate/judo background.) Even I was reduced to objecting, “Hey, no Japanese would execute a move like that!”.

The characters. I’ve never seen Donnie Yen in a movie before, but I sure am impressed now. As Ip Man, he played the character with a calmness and humanity that fitted perfectly with the character of Wing Chun itself. I’ll be watching out for him again. His wife, Xiong Dai Lin (played by who-knows-who), on the other hand, was a real nuisance — miserable when they were successful and only happy when they were starving to death. Their son never seemed to age. The other characters, from the Wushu grandmaster “thug”, Fan Sui-Wong, industrialist Quan, fellow instructor and friend, Lam, a policeman turned collaborator (played very well by actor Lam Ka Tung), play their roles extremely well, turning this into a well-rounded drama, as well as being a kick-ass martial arts movie.

The Japanese. Treated too kindly, in my opinion. I know there were human Japanese officers (I’m only alive now because one ignored the presence of a radio in my grandfather’s house during a random search, rather than putting the entire family — including my father — to death, as he should have done), but the vast majority of them were brutal, petty and ruthless, hellbent on killing every Chinese they could find and, to this day, unrepentant for what they inflicted on Asia (from China to Indonesia) in the name of the “East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere”. I was surprised they were portrayed with a shred of sympathy. It’s more than they deserve.

The plot. This is much, much more than a “mere” martial arts movie and provides enough meat for people who don’t even consider themselves action fans. Director Wilson Yip does a fine job with a complex story, wringing humanity from the unlikeliest of places. The range of characters involved, their interpersonal dynamics, the contrast of settings as time marches on in the movie, are all handled beautifully and will reward the viewer who hangs in there. What’s that, you say? “Hang in there”? I thought you liked the movie, Kaz? Yeah, I did. Until the next point.

The subtitles. To say they suck would be to give them a degree of utility they do not deserve. Do not expect to understand much of the movie, not even the all-important info-dumps that carry no translation whatsoever. You will get the gross plot movements, but everything else is opaque. I am only able to explain what little I can because I read half a dozen other reviews of Ip Man from English-speaking Chinese reviewers before I wrote this. I’m not sure whether the subtitles were so bad because the production company just didn’t care or because they were complete idiots but, either way, they’ve taken a treasure — an absolute classic — and essentially trashed it for non-Chinese speakers. My advice to you would be to go to the Ip Man website which is informative, if unfortunately Flash-heavy. Once you’ve read the information there, get the movie and watch it. You’ll be much more appreciative.

RATING: 7.5 / 10. A few niggles with the Japanese fighting techniques and the fact Ip Man’s son never seems to age, but slashed to buggery due to the woeful, shameful, atrocious, contemptible standard of subtitles. Considering the high calibre of the movie, the English so-called “translations” were nothing short of a travesty.

::Big breath :: And a Gong Xi Fa Cai to all Chinese readers of this blog!