Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

jmtreker The fighting is great like all good Hong Kong Kung Fu movies but the actor that plays Ip Man's brother is better than the star. I really don't buy the girl mooning over Ip Man the for years while he's away at school. Not so much high flying tight rope walking fight scenes as many other movies in the Ip Man genre which I appreciate. I would rather just see some really good kung fu action rather than guys who can fly. The fight between Ip man and his brother at the end of the movie is one of the best I've seen in these types of movies. Not so much high flying wire flips, just plain old mixed style martial arts action. Whoever choreographed that fight is awesome.

Robert N. Adams I had first heard about the Ip Man movie from a friend. He showed me the famous "fighting ten Japanese karate-ka at once" scene. I eventually remembered the movie and watched it three times in one day. Then, I watched Ip Man 2 twice.I had been reading about Ip Man and Ip Chun and came across the pharmacy fight scene on YouTube. At that point I had decided that I wanted to watch the movie.The one major thing that nags me about The Legend is Born: Ip Man is that it is "semi-autobiographical". Actually, that bugs me about all three movies, really - is it wrong to want to see an honest-to-goodness biographic film? I'm not sure if this is a trend in Chinese cinema, but the Japanese are very heavily villainized in Ip Man and The Legend is Born (and the British take their place in Ip Man 2). This natonalist/racist sentiment is very off-putting for a foreigner, but then again how often do we Americans (and Europeans) dip into the Nazi well, as it were? I imagine the Japanese are the "default bad guys" in Chinese cinema...One of the most important analogies related to me about movies is that they are always embellished a little here or there. Some take it really far, and when they do (as in the case of The Legend Is Born), you should approach the film as less of an authoritative biography and more like a legend that has been expanded and changed over the years. There may very well have been a great warrior name Hercules, and if he existed I'm sure a lot of the stuff of legends never really went down that way.As a standalone story (and thinking of Ip Man as the template of a character rather than an honest representation of the man himself), I think the movie is really good. It's far slower-paced than 1 and 2, but I think the story seems much more fleshed-out. Ip Man and Ip Man 2 seemed to have a more "slice of life" feel to them, whereas The Legend Is Born did a better job of telling a greater overall arching narrative in my opinion.The fight scenes are interesting. I always enjoy a "from nothing to something" underdog story, and it's amusing seeing young Ip Man get his ass handed to him. The brashness that he seems to lack as an adult (save for a few key scenes) in 1 and 2 is all the more showing here, and anyone who has been with young martial arts students can recognize the fire in young Ip Man's eyes.I can judge the movie as having a profound effect on me in the sense that I see Young Ip Man occasionally in 1 and 2. I see the older Ip Man (as played by Donnie) as a more mature, reserved adult - but when he gets in a bad way the teenager inside of him (and all of the lack of control that implies) is awakened. I see young Man in older Man. These films aren't even all that related save for sharing the same real person as a basis and some characters, but I thought it was really, really interesting.Ip Man may be our generations "Zatoichi". I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a dozen really good films in the next ten years, and I would watch every one of them.I give Ip Man the standard 7 out of 10. Great fight scenes, great story, but I came into it wanting to see an honest biopic and left with a nationalistically-slanted, compelling, and ultimately fictional story.

bob the moo I had heard positive things about the Ip Man films and I generally have found Donnie Yen to be an enjoyable and engaging martial arts star so, sight-unseen I decided to check out the sequel when the chance came up on an airplane recently. That it turned out to be a prequel to the original film didn't really bother me, since I didn't really have any expectations on the film in this regard and the lack of Donnie Yen didn't really bother me either (albeit this was because I expected the film to transition to him as the film progressed in time!).Anyway, the story here sees the rise of Man as he is trained up from a child, adapts his style thanks to input from the brother of his former master before returning to his original school to find shadowy plans from a Japanese influence moving into the area and making deadly political power moves. The plot generally does enough to provide a structure for the action sequences, but there is really nothing more to it than that. It had the potential to build character development and thus character tensions as well as making the most of the local political machinations and deceptions to add to the tension, but it doesn't really do either of these because it doesn't seem interested in making this more than a frame. It is still a semi-decent frame, but it is only a frame.In terms of fight sequences the film is also decent enough without being thrilling. The individual fights are well choreographed and are filmed without the frantic editing that western films often use to cover up that the cast are only able to do one move at a time – here the performers are the ones with the skill, not just the editors. This isn't to say that they are thrilling though, but at least they are impressive in terms of technical skill. It isn't till the final fight where a bit of passion and danger gets into the film, prior to this it is noticeably lacking and it did mean I was "watching" the action rather than getting into it. Although a lot of this feeling is from the film as a whole, a good chunk of it has to rest with Yu-Hang because he is frankly dull. In the same way Seagal tends to have the same expression in all manner of scenes, so Yu-Hang tends to have a slightly simple bland expression whether he is fighting off sideshow bullies or talking with a girl he likes. I imagine if I'd seen Yen in the first film, this comparison would be unbearable because, even on its own merits he is a remarkably bland presence in the lead. Sammo shows up so briefly you wonder why he bothered apart from being a known name to help sell the film. The rest of the younger cast are pretty average as well – skilled for sure, but mostly bland or limited; the only performance that really stuck in my mind was the girl who played the Japanese general's daughter) as she showed some colour and heart in the (albeit one-note) character she had.Overall Ip Man Legend is a solid martial arts film which delivers solid fight sequences in a so-so plot populated by mostly bland or limited performances. It carries itself with a rather worthy air that doesn't help escape the feeling of being a bit of a trudge, but it is still an "OK" film although nothing more than that.

Akira-36 Riding on the heels of Ip Man 1 & 2's success, this prequel is an alternate version of the earlier years of Ip Man's life in Foshan, China when he was just learning the art of Wing Chun. Under the tutelage of Chan Wah Shun (bizzarely played by Sammo Hung with the same look and cloth as his Hung Gar character in Ip Man 2), Ip Man went through rigorous Wing Chun training, while building friendship with two other classmates and a stunted courtship with his future-wife-to-be.The narrative suffers from overtly fictitious setup, with a strange concept of Japanese youth spies sent to China to infiltrate the society ala Infernal Affairs. Then there is the pleasantly quirky encounter with Leung Bik in Hong Kong, played by Ip Chun himself, the character Ip Man learnt non-orthodox Wing Chun techniques including high kicks, wrestling and trapping movements.It was nice to see Yuen Biao again on the silverscreen, in a limited role as Ng Chung Sok. The production value of the movie is certainly on par with the previous two movies, but little can be said of the story, acting and fight sequences.They border on the mediocre and superfluous, although one would welcome the toned down nationalistic sentiment which plagued Ip Man2.Overall, it was a fun movie to rent, but falls flat when compared to its predecessors. Director Wilson Yip wisely declined directing this prequel for a good reason. How many times can they milk the cow?