Every martial arts aficionado knows Bruce Lee, and that person is interested as well who taught him how to fight. That teacher is named Ipman.
A chinese martial arts student based in Foshan in China who studied that art of Wing Chun. Wing Chun is a style or a type of martial art that is more of upper body movement and strength. A typical kung fu art in ancient China. Now this movie reeks of that, two actually, the so called 'authentic' and the prodigal son type of style.
Ipman grew up learning the 'authentic' style but during the film's progression, he acquired the other style while he was taking up higher education in Hongkong. Combining both styles made Ipman formidable.
Usually martial arts movies bore me in the middle, I only like the beginning and the final battle with a boss of sorts. In this film however, they mixed in a four way love story. Summarized like this, 3 kids growing up with one of them got a strong crush in one of them, and the other (not the crush) to the girl. Then enter another girl from another world, so we have a twist. A rich girl falls in love with a poor boy, then a long time friend betrays his best friend, then the japanese created a stir on things. So you see here, I was not bored.
The martial arts techniques I'm not into details. What I am after the fight scenes is the choreography of it. Of how they do it beautifully that it makes up like a dance routine. The action scenes were done nicely and the story blended in well. Or is it the other way around?
Overall, the movie is a nice one to pass the time away. If you are an Ipman fan, its truly a watchable film. In fact I can say I line it up with the first Ipman film starring Donnie Yen. Much better than Ipman 2 and 3 I guess. The second and third films of Donnie Yen has their stories almost similar that it gets muddled in my memory. But this one is different, this is where A Legend is Born.
I dunno if Netflix carries this film, but for sure I saw this in Youtube. Another great YT Find. Don't forget to turn on the subtitles option :)
