Review of Ip Man: The Final Fight

Not the worst HK movie I've ever seen, but pretty far down there. Overall, I think the movie just never figured out what it wanted to be. Does it want to be a biography of Ip Man? Does it want to be a nostalgic piece to serve as a trip down memory lane for older Hong Kong citizens? Is this a movie to profile an iconic figure or a movie to give as much air time to multiple movie stars? In its attempt to honour Ip Man, the movie creates a wooden character of him which leaves little room for character development or interesting acting from Anthony Wong. Weakness is a trait that all humans have, but the movie does its best to remove as much of this trait from its portrayal of Ip Man as possible to immortalize him as some sort of legendary figure. Even in scenes where weakness is demonstrated, so little of it is explored that the audience is left with little to empathize with.

As part of that attempt to honour him, the movie makers tried to tie in as many characters and story lines from Ip Man's real life as possible. But again, its a mess. Few of those characters are developed and we never really get a chance to care about who they are below the surface. For example, I would have loved to see more of who Eric Tsang and Jordan Chan's characters really were.

As a final disappointment, scenes near the end of the movie totally betray the tone and style of the overall movie as well.

Watchable, but unfocused, disjointed and unorganized. A reminder to me why I have slowly drifted away from Hong Kong movies...