Lee Ritchie’s review published on Letterboxd:
Donnie Yen's bad acting. Fight scene. Donnie Yen's bad acting. Fight scene. Donnie Yen's bad acting. Fight scene. Donnie Yen's bad acting. Fight scene. Donnie Yen's bad acting. Fight scene. Donnie Yen's bad acting. Fight scene.
Those fight scenes were fucking nice though, weren't they? I love martial arts. When I went to my local after-school karate class as a kid, I almost got my yellow belt. That's how much I love martial arts. That's dedication right there. Seriously though, you pretty much get the yellow belt for participating a little while, I got fed up because you don't get to spar until you're a yellow belt and I was only there as a ten year old to show them my Jackie Chan level skills. Speaking of Jackie Chan, I watched his cartoon on Fox Kids (or Jetix as it was later known, don't know what it is now)! That's how much I fucking love martial arts.
So yeah, Donnie Yen is a bloody good martial artist. Each fight scene is as enthralling, intense and visceral as it needs to be, not minding how repetitive they eventually get because martial arts will never get old. Shame is though, Donnie Yen isn't a very good actor. He's like the Hong Kong version of say, Jason Statham? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Pretty much anyone in The Expendables, that's what Donnie Yen would find himself categorised into. (Mostly) great action stars who know how to make for an entertaining action scene, but when it comes to any actual acting their skills are less than admirable. Everyone else involved in was also pretty darn great during the action scenes as well, obviously some fantastic choreography from Sammo Hung.
And for a semi-biographical film on the man who trained the now legendary Bruce Lee, good acting might be a nice skill to have. If this was any other dumb kung-fu movie I could see myself giving it the benefit of the doubt, but a lot of it is modelled round the second Sino-Japanese War between the 1930s to 1940s. Which means a lot more of Yen's less than stellar acting abilities while I patiently wait for his next fantastic martial arts scene. To be fair to him though he actually does look like Yip Man, and he can pull off the look of his level of fighting too - not that I've ever actually seen it to make that comparison.
Everything else was technically well enough done, nothing particularly stood out as amazing. Was it just me (or possibly my copy of the film) or was the dialogue out of sync to the actual movie? I mean the actual Chinese spoken dialogue itself, obviously it'd have been a bit silly of me to ask if it were dubbed in English.
Anyway, Ip Man has some really pretty action scenes sprinkled amongst an inherently interesting story, acted at a below par degree by Donnie Yen. Good stuff.