Ip Man 2 (2010)

Ip Man 2 (2010)

6/10

Starring

Donnie Yen

Sammo Hung

Huang Xiaoming

Lynn Hung

Kent Cheng

Directed by Wilson Yip

The second movie in this Donnie Yen Ip Man series is just as fun when it comes to the fights, but not as cool when it comes to the story. We get to see Sammo Hung play a supporting character role in this movie in addition to his role as the martial arts choreographer (which he also did in the first movie). This movie has a more Rocky like setup than you would have expected from a martial film.

That said, the fights, the stunts and the effects that come with this film is something that you will enjoy seeing. The movie makes the best of the fights by distributing them all over the place to make up for the lack of story this movie has.

Unlike the first film where you cannot say, this is the fight to look at for, in this movie I can boldly say that. The fight(s) to look out for happened when Ip Man (Donnie Yen) had to face up to the different masters. The coolest is when he was up against Hung (Sammo Hung), their fight was more skillful than the others and even more than you would have expected and the special effects added to the needed fun.

In this here movie, things have moved on from the first film and Ip Man and his family have settled in Hong Kong. During that time Hong Kong was under the British rule, which did not end until 1997. The British officer in-charge of policing the place (Wallace) uses the martial art masters as his whips. Just like in the first movie there was a lackey who did the go between Wallace and the martial art masters.

Ip Man is broke financially and has set up a martial art school to raise money to care for his family. Things are not picking up in his school until a man came to challenge him and from there that man became a disciple and brought with him other students.

This one man became a big pain in the neck all through the movie, so watch out for that.

Setting up a school in the area was not allowed until Ip proved himself to be a worthy master. He took on the challenge and that is where we get to understand the place of Hung in the town. He was the head of things in the town.

After setting up shop, he was dragged into the problem Hung had with Wallace. He and Hung had their own differences to handle, but those difference had to be something Hung and Ip have to decide if they are worth carrying on when they can bond over a common enemy.

The movie is not as good as the first Ip Man film in terms of the story, but it is worth seeing nonetheless. Also we get to see little Bruce Lee approaching the master wanting to be a disciple. This is further explored in the third film of the series.