Ip Man 3 (2015)

Ip Man 3 (2015)

Starring: Donnie Yen, Lynn Xiong, Max Zhang, Mike Tyson, Patrick Tam Yiu-Man, Karena Ng Chin-Yu, Kent Cheng Jak-Si, Louis Cheung Kai-Chung, Leung Kar-Yan, Danny Chan Kwok-Kwan

Director: Wilson Yip

Action Director: Yuen Woo-Ping

Hong Kong, 1959. Wing Chun Grand Master Ip Man is now 66 years old. He has been estranged from his wife, Cheung Wing-Sing, for almost a decade thanks to the communist revolution in China and the closing of the border between Hong Kong and China. His two sons—Ip Chun and Ip Ching—are now adults. Ip also has two daughters, but we don’t know much about them. Ip Man has since shacked up with a mistress, with whom he has a third son, Ip Siu-Wah. Some former child actor named Bruce Lee had been training privately under Ip Man for a few years—Lee couldn’t train openly because his mother had European blood in her—and had even won a local boxing tournament.

Now throw all those facts away because Ip Man 3 doesn’t really care about them.

The film opens with Ip Man (Donnie Yen), now an established and respected teacher in Hong Kong, being approached by Bruce Lee (Danny Chow, who had played the Little Dragon in the “Legend of Bruce Lee” series), who wants lessons. That really goes nowhere except to establish Lee as a bit of an arrogant show-off. Once again, in real life, Bruce had already been training for several years under Ip Man by 1959…but don’t let facts get in the way.

Later that day, little Ip Ching (Wang Shi)—oh, those darn facts--gets in a fight at school with a new kid, Cheung Fong (Cui Can). Both of them “know” wing chun and are trying to prove to the other whose kung fu is better. When Cheung’s father, Cheung Tin-Chi (Max Zhang, of Master Z and The Invincible Dragon), fails to show up to pick up his son, the Ip’s have the kid over for dinner. The dad eventually arrives and is visibly jealous of Ip Man, although he’s polite enough to hold it in. Later that evening, Cheung is fighting illegal bouts down at the wharf, run by the local scumbag Ma King-Sang (Patrick Tam, of The Legend of Zu and The Legend of Speed). Ma is working for a crime boss named Frank (Mike Tyson, of China Salesman), who is involved in a real estate scheme that requires him to buy up some properties, including Ip Ching’s school.

The next day, Ip Man heads down to the martial arts association clubhouse thingie for a group photo with the local masters, including Master Tin Ngo-San (Leung Kar-Yan, of The Victim and The Thundering Mantis). He forgets a date he had scheduled with his wife, Cheung Wing-Sing (a returning Lynn Xiong), who sends him to pick up their son, Ip Ching, from school. While he’s there, Ma King-Sang shows up to physically coerce the principal (Tats Lau, of Gorgeous and The Good of Cookery) into signing over the property. Ip Man shows up in the nick of time to fight off Ma and his ruffians. They come back the next evening, however, but Ip Man and his students are waiting for them. A huge fight breaks out, and although Ip Man—and Cheung Tin-Chi, who was in the neighborhood--gives the thugs a good walloping, they still manage to burn down some of the classrooms.

Ip Man and his students agree to stand guard over the school day and night for the next few weeks. This keeps him away from his wife and son, especially the former. Cheung Wing-Sing starts experiencing severe abdominal pains, which turns out to be cancer. She decides not to tell her husband until after a traumatic episode involving Ma King-Sang kidnapping some of the children from the school, including Ip Ching and Cheung Fong. Yes, that is resolved via a big fight down at the wharf, but it also spurs the next bit of character development from Ip Man.

Once he knows that his wife is terminally ill, Master Ip takes a step back from his kung fu duties in order to spend as much time with her as he can. But, there is not only still the matter of Frank the crime boss to be resolved, but now Cheung Tin-Chi has decided that he wants to be the wing chun teacher in town. He starts defeating all the local masters in one-on-one duels while preaching how his wing chun is “pure.” It won’t be long before he’s challenging Ip Man to a duel to determine whose wing chun is the best.

As a biopic, Ip Man 3 offers little historical value. There are little details the film gets right—Cheung Wing-Sing did indeed die of cancer in 1960; Bruce Lee was an accomplished dancer—but the context in which those details are placed is quite far removed from actual history. But then again, we Hong Kong cinephiles ignore that sort of thing in the Once Upon a Time in China and Drunken Master franchises, so we should ignore it here. I suppose because the film is set at a time that our parents were alive, the fudging of the details makes it harder to stomach than it would be for a historical film set in the 19th century.

If you can get past the historical inaccuracies, Ip Man 3 is a particularly compelling movie when it comes to depicting a man trying to balance the needs of his family with those of his career. Ip Man is never a bad husband or father, but he is imperfect and often allows what he believes are his duties to the community trump his family obligations. He’s not wrong for wanting to protect his son’s school, even if it comes at a price. And once he realizes what’s at stake in his own home, he does make the necessary sacrifices, even at the cost of his own reputation. And Ip’s wife is understanding enough to appreciate his efforts to spend time with her during her final days, but also encourage him in doing what comes best to him: kung fu. Donnie Yen and Lynn Xiong’s scenes together are quiet and loving in a way that keeps the viewer in the film even when the fists aren’t flying.

The film also benefits by dialing down the Rocky IV levels of jingoism that hampered the second half of Ip Man 2. Yes, Frank the crime boss is a foreigner—Mike Tyson jumps back and forth between saying his lines in English and Cantonese, Michael Wong-style—but he never talks down to the Chinese. There is some talk about the British members of the police force being corrupt, but it never feels like they’re trying to pound it into our skulls that foreigners are all racist assholes like they did in Ip Man 2 and 4, and Master Z. For most of the first half, the main villain is Ma King-Sang, who is so despicable that his master (Leung Kar-Yan’s character) wants to kick his ass. And the final act pushes Cheung Tin-Chi, a fellow Chinese, into the forefront as the main antagonist. In other words, the two main antagonists are Chinese, with the foreigner serving mainly a secondary background antagonist.

Speaking of antagonist, the action remains of the high standard established by the first two films. Sammo Hung did not return for this one with, with the action duties moving over to Yuen Woo-Ping. Yuen Woo-Ping had worked on another Ip Man film, The Grandmaster, for which he had won the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Action Choreography. His work here was nominated for the same award, but lost to Nicky Li Chung-Chi for SPL 2: A Time for Consequences. This was the first team up between Donnie Yen and Yuen Woo-Ping since their falling out two decades before during the filming of Wing Chun (how ironic). Interestingly enough, despite Yuen Woo-Ping being synonymous with wire-fu, the action in Ip Man 3 is probably the most grounded of the three films in the franchise up to that point. If anyone complains about wire-fu in this film, please feel free to ignore them.

During the film’s first half, the two major set pieces involve Donnie Yen taking on Ma King-Sang’s gang. Their second encounter is particularly large scale, with Donnie fighting a half-dozen trained boxers, plus dozens of nameless thugs armed with sticks and hatchets. Donnie gets to fight with a long pole, which then gets broken and becomes something closer to an escrima fight. Max Zhang joins the fun—his son was kidnapped, too—and takes out half a dozen thugs with wing chun, too. Zhang also gets to participate in some illegal bouts, where he destroys the competition with his wing chun skills. 

I think this was turning point in Zhang’s career. He cut his teeth on low-budget productions like Chinese Heroes and The Undiscovered Tomb, but by the early 2010s, he found himself with supporting roles in more prestigious productions like The Grandmaster and Rise of the Legend. Two-thousand fifteen saw him play Cheung Tin-Chi in this and the main villain in SPL 2: A Time For Consequences. Afterward, a lot more opportunities for playing the lead role started to pop up for Zhang. These days, the Mainland action films he’s been showing up in have arguably been beneath his talents, but he’s still keeping busy at least.

Back to the action, there are two important fights during the film’s second half. One is the much-awaited showdown between Donnie Yen and Mike Tyson. And I must say: it’s a fine little fight. Divorced from the racist attitudes that made Donnie’s bout with the late Darren Shahlavi in Ip Man 2 annoying, watching a wing chun master fight a Western boxer is just good ol’ fashioned entertainment. I like the bit when Donnie gets into an especially-low wing chun stance—probably the chum kiu form--and counters Tyson’s sheer brute strength with more intricate legwork, elbows doubling as blocks and strikes, and a shifting center of gravity.

Then there’s the climax, which is the throwdown between the two wing chun masters. The fight is broken into three sections: a staff duel, a butterfly sword fight, and then hand-to-hand wing chun goodness. The staff duel involves the Dragon Poles, which are heavy weapons that can reach up to eight feet in length, sometimes longer. The butterfly sword fight is as authentic as you could expect in a movie tailored to mainstream tastes, and a far cry from the wired-up baht jam do vs. spear duel of YWP’s earlier Wing Chun (although I like that fight, too). One of the neat details is the high-pitched clang of the blades striking and dragged across each other, which is so loud that the fight’s observers are visibly unnerved. Then we get to the hand-to-hand goodness, which features chi sau, biu jee (or “darting fingers”) and, of course, the famous one-inch punch. The finale of Ip Man 3 is the sort of “fight clinic as an action scene” that I don’t think we’ve seen in a mainstream action movie since the glory days of Lau Kar-Leung at the Shaw Brothers. And more power to Donnie Yen, Max Zhang, Yuen Woo-Ping and Wilson Yip for pulling it off!