Ip Man 4: The Finale

Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019) closes the series. Ip Man is diagnosed with cancer, travels to San Francisco to enrol his son in school, and encounters the martial arts association in Chinatown. The association opposes teaching Wing Chun to foreigners, while a sergeant in the American military rejects Chinese martial arts entirely. The subject is immigration and racism. The refused school enrolment, the pressure inside the neighbourhood and what happens on the base take up more time than the fights. Donnie Yen played Ip Man in all four films and announced he was leaving the role. Wilson Yip directed all four. Yuen Woo-ping choreographed the fights, having done the same for The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Bruce Lee is in it too. He was a real student of Ip Man, and the film restages his martial arts demonstration in San Francisco and the argument about teaching outsiders. The series was a major commercial success in China, and this entry was among its highest grossing worldwide. It runs 105 minutes. Good for: martial arts cinema, Donnie Yen, and finishing the series. Less good for: almost every American character is written as a one dimensional racist, which weakens the film's own argument. The history is loose. There are fewer fight sequences than in the earlier films.