Donnie Yen's Ip Man (葉問) Early Review

Yet another unanticipated opportunities!  Terence got tickets to the HK Premiere of Donnie Yen's new film 'Ip Man' ( 葉問),  the bio-pic about Wing Chun master (commonly known as  Yip Man). The trailer looked pretty cool and I liked Donnie's last few films (' Painted Skin' and ' Flashpoint') quite a lot, so I was looking forward to seeing this one for a while.  The film, directed by Wilson Yip, is quite well made.  Sammo Hung did the action direction, and its also very good.  I've seen tons of wushu movies over the years and I can say that this is definitely one of the best martial arts movies I've seen in a long time.    (best in terms of its quality as a movie and the martial arts filming and chorreography as well).  Performances are good, sets are good, cinematography is good.  Lynn Hung plays Yip Si-Mu!Only a few caveats -  1) I feel the film's peak actually comes in the middle...  the finale is a bit heavy on the melodrama(see above photo), and almost anti-climatic in comparison.2) The Pro-China 'propaganda' aspect gets a bit hard to bear towards the end... This is actually quite common to a lot of Chinese movies, but this one is a bit above normal.   One thing to keep in mind to keep things in context is that this film, like many of the bigger HK productions nowadays, is a coproduction with a Mainland Chinese film group, which means the script has to be approved by the Chinese government's film board.  Also its getting a wide release in China so I'm sure they're hoping to make a lot on Mainland box office,  whipping up some Nationalistic sentiment doesn't hurt....    oh, and FYI - if you're Japanese you may not like this film very much... Anyway, I suggest any and every martial arts film fan check it out.  Its definitely a well made movie most people can enjoy.   an 8/10!