Ip Man 4: The Finale is, as the subtitle suggests, the final installment of the Ip Man film series, which tells the life story of the Wing Chun grandmaster Ip Man (played by Donnie Yen). Just like with Ip Man 3, I hoped Ip Man 4 would primarily center on the relationship of Ip Man and his most famous student, Bruce Lee (played by Danny Chan), and how the latter developed Jeet Kune Do. Unfortunately, while Bruce does have more screen time here than in the last movie, he doesn’t really play a big part in the main storyline.
The plot follows Ip, having just recently diagnosed with cancer, travelling to San Francisco to secure a school where his problem son (Jim Liu) can continue his education. His protégé Bruce Lee is based in the city for a while now, and has already started his own martial arts school. However, the immigrant martial arts masters in Chinatown, especially the president of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) Wan Zong-hua (Wu Yue), frown at Bruce’s practice of teaching Americans kung fu. In turn, Wan’s disapproval of Bruce carries over to Ip, being his master. Unfortunately for Ip, he needs a referral letter from Wan, as the CCBA president, in order to enroll his son into a school.
Meanwhile, Hartman Wu (Vanness Wu), a staff sergeant of the local U.S. Marine Corps base and Bruce Lee’s student, tries to convince his superiors to incorporate Chinese martial arts into the Marines’ hand-to-hand combat training. This earns him the ire of gunnery sergeant Barton Geddes (Scott Adkins), a karate practitioner who thinks it’s the superior martial art. Driven by fury and arrogance, Sgt. Geddes becomes bent on defeating and embarrassing the local kung fu masters to prove his point.
This movie is somewhat racially charged. The script really goes out of its way to have racist white antagonists and set up situations where leftist straw man anti-nationalism talking points can be uttered and seemingly validated. In relation to this, there are some subtle anti-America and pro-China undertones going on in the narrative. Nonetheless, this aspect is negligible as well as even somewhat expected.
As usual, there is great cinematography and high production value on top of amazing action. One will be left satisfied from all the excellent fight scenes. Donnie Yen impresses once more. And, yes, Danny Chan’s Bruce Lee does get the chance to shine.
However, I have a nit to pick with that final fight. The circumstance surrounding that fight is tailor-made for Bruce Lee’s personality to jump into. It doesn’t make sense that it’s Ip Man, other than the fact that this is his movie, who decides to challenge the big bad. Now, I don’t mind Ip Man doing the final fight, but the movie should have had the forethought of explaining why Bruce Lee didn’t opt to do that fight when he was the most logical to be in it.
Lastly, I believe this is worth mentioning here: I feel that 16-year-old Vanda Margraf is going to make a splash soon. I feel that she’s going to be the next Fan Bingbing.
In the end, even though it doesn’t have the story I would have preferred, Ip Man 4: The Finale is still enjoyably solid, and gives the saga a reasonable conclusion. As a fan of this series and of Hong Kong martial arts cinema in general, I was quite pleased with it.
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