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This review may contain spoilers
I ended up taking a bit of time to finally finish watching this film because the beginning part felt too slow; I had a hard time focusing on watching it. Like, I get it that the film first needed to establish that Ip Man's new beginning in HK had been rough, and it took a bit of time for him to properly start his own martial arts club, but I wished that they could've sped it up and got the clash with the other clubs sooner. And I also wished that the film could've shortened the bits about Wong Leung picking up fights with Man and others before getting his humility kicked in cos yeah, the way he's written in this film annoyed me so much. Though, compared to the first film, at least this one felt less like a documentary and more like a slight peek into the early life of Ip Man in HK.Action-wise, Donnie and Sammo Hung don't disappoint, and we even have Louis Fan's character making a brief appearance in the middle. But yeah, like the first film... the storytelling in this second one was not too great. Like, some pacing could've been faster, and some scenes could've been slower or longer, like how Ip Man was still finding time to spend time with his friend who suffered brain damage after trying to help Man's family escape Foshan. While it's good that most of the scenes where people were fighting were done well, when the story part of the racism plot, the conflict between the clubs and Ip's challenges to support his family were treated less in detail than the fight scenes... the film really felt a bit imbalanced. Like often enough, I felt like speeding up or skipping some of the slow scenes because it was so slow that it was very frustrating to watch. Overall, if you're watching the movie for some Donnie-Sammo fights, you're in for a good time, but if you're looking for a 'deep' story, umm... nah.
Considering that there were mentions of Bruce Lee being in this movie and how it's supposed to cover a bit of his life before becoming Ip Man's student, it was a bit disappointing to only see that near the end and mostly as a montage. Like, I thought we'd see how the kid even heard about Ip Man and how that got his interest, but nah. While I understand that it took time to get the approval from Lee's family to even add the mention, I wished that they'd put them in the next movie rather than just barely being mentioned in this film. Like yes, Wong Leung was based on the person responsible for mentoring Bruce, but we don't even get to see them together properly! That said, considering how the early part of the film had focused on Ip Man trying to care for Chow... it does feel off to not actually have a scene after the end where Ip finds out that his friend had finally remembered him after listening to the fight on the radio. So yeah, this film had some great fights, but the story was all over the place.
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