IP MAN 2 - 葉問2

IP Man 2 (Pronounce as Yip Mun, previously I keep pronouncing it as the letter I + P Man and got corrected by bf)

A short summary

IP Man 2 is the continuation of IP Man showing Ip and his family now based in Hong Kong and Ip attempt to make a living by

opening a martial arts school teaching the wu shu called 詠春. Opening a martial arts school in Hong Kong posed a lots of problems for Ip. Initially, he couldn't find any students as he was not famous in this region. Just when his students starts to increase, one of his students gets into a fight with students of another school. They caused a commotion and the local school master Hung Chun-nam (洪震南) told Ip that in order to open a martial arts school in Hong Kong, he must first be challenged by other martial arts teacher and he should not be defeated in the time frame of a buring joss stick. Of course Ip won and not only that he refused to pay the monthly protection fees which was to be given to Superintendant Wallace of the police force.

Master Hung's student begans to stop people from joining Ip's martial arts school and fights started again between the students of this two schools. Because of the fight, the residents decided not to rent the roof top to him and he was very upset but he didn't give up, he asked his students to turn up at his home. He went to confront Master Hung, asking him what exactly does he wants. After this confrontation, the relationship between the two masters seems to get better and Master Hung even gave Ip tickets to a boxing competition.

On the day of the boxing competition, the various schools display their skills but one westerner boxing Champion called Twister looks down on the Chinese martial arts quoting them all as weaklings. He even went up to the ring to openly taunt and beat the students. Master Hung could not take it that the Chinese martial arts were being made ridiculous by this Westerner so he went up to fight with Twister. In the beginning, both were on par but Master Hung grew weaks as he was encountering a shortness of breath and was beaten severely. Ip tried to persuade Master Hung to stop the fight but Master Hung is determine to prove himself. In the end, all the audience can only watch helplessly as Master Hung gets beaten to death by the ruthless Twister.

The later part of the movie, predictably, Ip took up the challenge set by Twister to fight him. At round 2, the judges disallowed the use of kicks by Ip during the fight. Ip was thus beaten several times by Twister. Eventually and luckily, Ip finds Twister's weak spots and defeated the boxer. In his ending speech, he states that he did not win just to show that the Chinese martial arts is more superior or whatever but to send the message that although both martial arts are different in many ways, both races are equal and everyone should come to understand and respect one another. When asked what is the thing he most wanted to do, he replied to go home. So he went home and reunites with his family. His wife has smoothly given birth to the second child.

The final scene shows a 10 years old boy wanting to learn Wing Chun from Ip but was rejected by Ip to ask him to come back to him later when he is older. He is none other then Bruce Lee.

This movie is like a biography of Yip Man who is once the teacher of Bruce Lee. There are some funny scenes and 甄子丹's fighting is really superb. He can delivers punches at lightning speed and at one time fight a group of people. If the real Yip Man were still alive, he would be 117 years old now. One can find photos of him and Bruce Lee on the internet. This movie is definitely worth a watch however I find the storyline on how the Westerner looks down on the Chinese is similar to a movie recently just watched "True Legend - 苏乞儿".