Ip Man

Wilson Yip’s film is set in Foshan but was not shot there: the present city no longer looks the part, so production moved to Shanghai. Ip Chun, Ip Man’s eldest son, was a technical consultant; he would have preferred Foshan and said the film’s mansion is grander than the real one. Donnie Yen did not arrive with Wing Chun: his background was his mother’s Shaolin and tai chi plus what he picked up in Boston, and for the part he worked with several trainers rather than one sifu, not wanting to be anybody’s copy. In rehearsal an axe fighter accidentally cut the side of his left eye. Sammo Hung shares the choreography credit with Tony Leung Siu-hung. The duels with the Japanese officer Miura never happened; they are the script’s invention. The film still took Best Film and Best Action Choreography at the Hong Kong Film Awards and lost its other ten nominations there, Yen in Best Actor and Yip in Best Director among them. A good fit if you can live with the famous fight against ten men sitting mid film rather than at the end, and a hero who refuses to fight for a long time before it. Not for you if you want a documentary account; the duel under occupation is the film inventing its own hero.