The language choices are too formal without any abbreviations or colloquialisms to lend any authenticity. While most of the film is Cantonese with little dips into English, the performances of Americans and native-English speakers is a bit rough around the edges. Not helping matters are the English performers. It's an odd element that comes in halfway into the film that already established an antagonist. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing Scott Adkins do his thing and he's great here chewing up the scenery - even if his accent is more than silly - but the story is a lot of hokum that takes a nicely grounded human element and turns it into a cartoon. Where things falter and become more of a comic book b-movie Kung-Fu flick is with the Geddes storyline. Had the film stuck to these grounds I feel it would have been a success. There's some nice heartfelt drama here about the value of traditions, heritage, legacy, and the need to grow and adapt to new cultures and surroundings. Here we finally actually get a little of Bruce Lee-styled action thanks to a solid performance from Danny Chan. It feels like over the last 12 years or so there's been at least as many films focused on Bruce Lee's one-time teacher.
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The Ip Man series has wildly deviated from historical points over the last couple entries - so those expecting a true-to-life biopic of the late master aren't going to find it here. Marines should adopt Eastern fighting styles. Upon arrival, Master Ip is caught in a war between the traditional Kung-Fu masters lead by Wan-Zong-Hua (Wu Yue) who want to prevent Westerners from learning Chinese martial arts and white racists like Barton Geddes (Scott Adkins) who doesn't feel the U.S. When his star pupil Bruce Lee (Danny Chan) requests him to come to San Francisco to see him compete in a martial arts tournament, Master Ip sees this as an opportunity to find a new school for his son and close some chapters to his life before he runs out of time.
To top it off, his son Ip Ching (Jim Liu) has been expelled from school after fighting with a bully who stole his comic book. He's also been diagnosed with throat cancer.
Master Ip (Donnie Yen) has lost his wife.