High-Octane
Summary
It never reaches the heights of the Donnie Yen films but Young Ip Man is a fun addition to the Ipsloitation genre with regular fight scenes, a brisk runtime and a surprisingly emotional core to the main characters.
Plot: In 1917 young Ip Man first came to Hong Kong to study, but his peaceful campus life was unexpectedly broken. A shocking hostage situation occurred on the day when the school held an English speech contest.
Review: The Ipsloitation keeps on coming with yet another Ip Man film; this time it’s about Young Ip Man who now faces a Die Hard scenario as his school is taken over by villains and he is the only man who can stop them; he really had a busy life, didn’t he?
I hadn’t even watched any trailers to this movie, so I had no idea what to expect but it ended up being a lot of fun. Once again it’s pleasingly short running just under 80 minutes; there are fight scenes every few minutes and we also get characters to care about. I particularly loved the dynamic between Ip Man and the main “villain” who has a tragic backstory.
The fight scenes never quite match the level of the Donnie Yen movies where you can clearly see some hits aren’t making any impact but there is still an energy to them and they were clearly trying to mimic Yen’s style in parts.
Like I said, it’s well paced rarely stopping for breath but I think it’s interesting that a movie under 90 minutes can give us memorable characters and plentiful action scenes proving that so many modern Hollywood movies are just long for the sake of it.
Overall, Young Ip Man hardly reinvents the genre but I do love my Die Hard scenarios and this has enough action and near constant fight scenes to make for an easy watch.
