DVD Reviews

Ip Man 2 – Blu-ray Review

By Frankie Dees May 3, 2011, 14:19 GMT

International superstar Donnie Yen reprises his iconic role as the real-life kung fu Grandmaster Ip Man, widely known as the man who brought Wing Chun to the world with the help of his star pupil, Bruce Lee. Master Ip, a new arrival in British-occupied Hong Kong, wants to open a martial arts academy to teach his unique Wing Chun style. A corrupt group of martial arts masters, led by Master ...more

‘Ip Man 2’ is a successful continuation of the true story of the Wing Chun master who brought fame across the world to Chinese martial-arts, mostly via the pupilage of one man in his later years…yep, Bruce Lee.

The great Donnie Yen plays Ip Man and these films are a refreshing return to form for Chinese action pics that don’t involve an abundance of CGI and an army of thousands.

Picking up directly where the first pic left off with Master Ip proving his expertise against the Japanese occupation in Fo Shan, the 2nd film follows the Wing Chun master as he moves to Hong Kong and opens up a Wing Chun martial-arts school where pupils to train seem to be slim pickens.

With one child and another on the way, Ip man’s wife is really starting to worry about financial responsibilities when word finally spreads and Ip Man gains the trust of some local kids.

Not quite that easy, though, as Master Ip has to prove his mettle to the local masters to be allowed to open a martial-arts school. Headed by Master Hung Chum-nam (Sammo Hung pulling double duty as actor and fight choreographer), he sets up a great sequence where a tabletop is balanced on some crates and surrounded by upside-down bar stools.

One by one, he gets challenged by the various masters until he finally goes man-to-man with the chubby, but still gots it Master Hung. It’s an energetic and fun sequence that harkens back to a simpler Shaw Brothers era where thousands of arrows eradicating everything in sight wasn’t a prerequisite for a Chinese action pic.

Passing the fighting challenge, he’s allowed to open the school if he pays the now disclosed fees (shouldn’t they have told him about the fees before the damn fights?), Master Ip refuses and starts a turf war of sorts with Master Hung which quickly subsides as Master Ip proves himself to be a respected and steadfast keeper of the peace.

No sooner than Master Hung becomes an ally though does a new villain show its rather formidable face in the form of Taylor “The Twister” Milos (Darren Shahlavi), an English boxer who comes trumpeting through town bellowing about his superior fighting skills.

Much like the first film, the climatic battle becomes a national pride exhibition where ‘Twister’ rather crudely represents the English occupying forces in Hong Kong with Master Ip defending the nation’s honor.

A bit silly in concept and no less flag-waving and manipulative than ‘Rocky IV’ thematically, the martial-arts vs. boxing showdown still makes one hell of a fight with Darren Shahlavi ridiculously over the top but in keeping with the genre’s black-and-white melodrama to up the stakes of the big climatic battles.

Equal in quality to the first, the trade-off here is a less smooth narrative but more consistent and bigger action set-pieces.

The pic is always moving and throwing bigger and better action at us and martial-arts stalwart Donnie Yen is perfectly cast as the family-man master of peace who isn’t afraid to thrown down when the need arises.

At 47, Yen is one of younger martial-arts stars of a certain generation after Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Sammo Hung and Michelle Yeoh and it’ll be sad when this generation passes the buck as I see no clear successors. And it’s nice to see Sammo Hung, at 59, get another chance to shine in a good ‘ol fashioned wire-fu tabletop brawl.

The film is presented with an AVC 1080p 2.35 encode that looks great. A medium-budget pic with a softer look, there’s not a lot of colors to pop but detail is super-sharp and reflects the film well.

There are DTS-HD 5.1 Master Aud tracks in Cantonese, Mandarin and English so pick your poison. Obviously, the original Cantonese track should be the way to go but dub is always fun for old-school martial-art fans used to only having the dub option.

Special Features on this two-disc set start off with a 20-minute Making of featurette with BTS footage and cast and crew interviews. A ‘Behind the Sets’ featurette which examines some of the impressive sets of the film, tougher than one might think considering the period Hong Kong setting. Teaser, Theatrical and International Trailers round out disc 1.

Disc two includes some ‘Deleted Scenes’, some short ‘Shooting Diary’ segments and most comprehensively, a ton of interviews with all the main players including Donnie Yen, Sammo Hung, director Wilson Yip and the ‘Twister’ himself Darren Shahlavi. A lot of great insights and anecdotes and are not to be missed if you’re fan of the pic.

I’d say that ‘Ip Man 2’ and its predecessor are two of the best Chinese martial-arts films to come out in quite a while with rousing, kickass fight scenes and a fantastic central turn from Donnie Yen.

And filling out the pic with past and present martial-art stars like Sammo Hung, Lo Mang and Siu-Wong Fan is just icing on the cake. Some might giggle or complain at the more saccharine elements of the pic but frankly who cares about that stuff? You came for some ass-kicking and some ass-kicking is what you’ll get.

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