The two action actors go up against each other in an explosive bout that even surpasses their previous match-up in SPL. In addition to a charismatic Donnie Yen returning as Wing Chun master Ip Man, action director Sammo Hung also joins the cast as a powerful martial arts master that Ip Man must defeat to survive in Hong Kong. Transporting the story from World War II Foshan to colonial era Hong Kong, everything is bigger than ever in the continuation of this successful action franchise. Shahlaviand Mayer compete in ham acting to be Most Obnoxious Racist Colonialist in the kung-fu canon, but one can hardly tell them apart – so alike are their growls and grimaces.įrom lingering close-ups of paraphernalia, like Ip’s ashtrays and his wife’s (Lynn Hsiong) biscuit-tin-cum-piggy-bank, ‘50s shop signs and posters, the meticulous art direction and tastefully saturated image colors provide a trip down memory lane for Hong Kong moviegoers.Donnie Yen, director Wilson Yip, and producer Raymond Wong repeat the incredible success of the first Ip Man film with Ip Man 2. Consequently, none of them has the commanding presence of their predecessors.
Supporting roles are drawn with a fraction of the feeling and humanity that Yip poured into the original. There’s no question Yenis at the peak of his career.His prowess is staggering, but it is even more pleasurable to see his improving acting chops and the more sympathetic interplay between him and Hung than their previous appearance inYip’s SPL. Not only that, he follows up with a dining scene of very different sentiment – when Ip joins Hong for a family meal, giving the former a chance to see the tender, fatherly side of the latter and the number of mouths he must feed. Its entertainment value easily trumps the climactic boxing match, where brute force and hard punches rule. Technically, every move is devised and shot with consummate skill. Here, he takes this auteurist touch to new heights by staging a duel between Ip and Hong in a restaurant, on top of a wobbly round table. The dinner table has always appeared in Yip’s films as the locus of dramatic tension or character-revelation, as seen in Ip Man, Bullets over Summer and Juliet in Love. To obtain endorsement to teach, he rustles the feathers of a more established teacher Hong Chun-nam (Sammo Hung) and finds himself in the boxing ring against Twister (Darren Shahlavi), a British champion boosted by police superintendent Wallace (Charlie Mayer) to uphold the physical supremacy of white men.
However, Ip soon discovers that the martial arts scene in Hong Kong is mired in politics and corruption. He sets up a makeshift Wing Chun academy on a rooftop, and recruits a posse of working class lads led by cocky but talented Wong Leung ( Wang Xiaoming). While Part 1 established Ip Man (Yen) as a tolerant, self-effacing martial-arts geek who spends the whole time withstanding taunts to fight, Part 2 focuses on his new calling as a teacher.Īfter his defeat of Japanese commander Miura in a public match, Ip and his family arrive penniless in Hong Kong. In Ip Man 2, thestage shifts from Japanese-occupied Foshan in China to British-governed Hong Kong.
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