Review of The Legend Is Born: Ip Man (2010) by Jonathan P — 05 Nov 2013

Ip Man has become some sort of martial arts folk legend thanks to all these movies about him, kicked off by the Donnie Yen one, simply titled Ip Man. This movie came out about a year after Ip Man did and does its eat to trick viewers into believing it's of the same series as the Donnie Yen ones (it's even called Ip Man Zero sometimes). It stars Dennis To, who does kind of look like a young Donnie Yen and also does his best to mimic Yen's performance as Ip Man. I was prepared for basically a low budget rip off just trying to cash in on the Ip Man name. And though that's basically what this is, it's a pretty high quality rip off and I was surprised that I didn't hate it.

All the Ip Man stories build him up to be some sort of martial arts god who saves.

China from invading foreigners with his lightning fists and steel integrity. This one is no different, though it runs through his early years, following his training in Wing Chun. This movie might be based in some fact, but I seriously doubt Ip Man was fighting ninjas in his school while training, so I'll assume at least the third act of this movie is completely made up. But who knows, maybe it's not. The fighting in this movie is actually not bad. There are some incredibly stiff looking fights but most are shot decently enough to look entertaining and fast.

There's not really much else to say about this. If you need a quick martial arts fix as you wait for the next legit entry in the Ip Man film series, this one is enough to distract you for an hour and a half. Don't expect any of the emotional gung-ho-ness of the originals, but the fights are a decent enough approximation. Oh, I did like how they addressed the mixing of styles in this movie. Not sure if that actually happened or not, but it's something not usually talked about in Chinese martial arts movies.

Oh yea... Bonus confusing points for having both Sammo Hung and Louis Fan in this movie but playing completely different characters than they were in the Donnie Yen movies. And the soundtrack is kind of a rip off of Hans Zimmer's Last Samurai score.