Ip Man 4: The Finale *** (2019, Donnie Yen, Scott Adkins, Kwok-Kwan Chan) – Movie Review

Donnie Yen stars in the simple but likeable Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019) as the Sixties Kung Fu master Ip Man, who this time travels to the US where his student Bruce Lee (Kwok-Kwan Chan) has upset the crucial, all-powerful San Francisco Chinese benevolent society and the martial arts community by opening a Wing Chun school.

Ip Man finds he has cancer, and is in America to secure schooling for his stroppy teenage son, who’s been expelled for fighting back in Hong Kong. The school’s okay with this, but first somehow Ip Man has to get a letter of recommendation from the dogged head of the Chinese benevolent society.

At the school Ip Man saves a Chinese girl from local whitey racist bullies, and she turns out to be the nice daughter of the society head, and they become friends, she calling him Uncle and trying to intervene over the letter, further upsetting her dad. Then Ip Man finds he has to deal with US Army Marine racist bullies, and he ends up fighting a couple of them, finally putting mean gunnery sergeant Barton Geddes (Scott Adkins) out of action.

Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019) is an interesting movie, with plenty of well-staged, imaginatively and inventively choreographed Kung Fu action, a little too much CGI there, but not absolutely of ridiculously too much. The screenplay by writers Tai-lee Chan, Hiroshi Fukazawa, Lai-Yin Leung and Edmond Wong is actually about something, and has some things on its mind, and shares them with us, while still delivering the Kung Fu action highlight moments. It hits home effectively and properly, though of course none too subtly, with its subject of racism in America in the late Sixties.

At 56, Donnie Yen is looking pretty much older now, but then his character is dying of cancer, but he gives a grave, dignified performance, and is still nifty at the Kung Fu. Scott Adkins makes an impressively intimidating villain, and Kwok-Kwan Chan is good as Bruce Lee, much better than Mike Moh in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019), both as lookalike and performer. Also impressing are Mark Strange as Karate Champion, Chris Collins as Colin Frater and Vanness Wu as Hartman.

Director Wilson Yip’s pacing is weak, a bit slow in places, especially at the start, and then way too rushed at the end as though 20 minutes have been ruthlessly hacked out of it. Nevertheless, Ip Man 4: The Finale ensures that the popular martial arts saga reaches a satisfying final conclusion, and is often a rousing experience that should thrill Kung Fu fans. The period re-creation is good, as befits its budget of $52,000,000, and it looks nearly as tasty as Tarantino’s movie.

It is surprising to find that it is filmed in Lancashire, Merseyside, Liverpool, and North Yorkshire, UK, as well as China, although the American High School does look kind of English (it is Pensby High School, Irby, Wirral).

The previous episodes are Ip Man (2008), Ip Man 2 (2010), and Ip Man 3 (2015).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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