Less gore, more fights in Ip Man bio-pic

It's been 20 years since true-crime feature The Untold Story shocked audiences with what critic Paul Fonoroff called "a mindless orgy of bloodletting". The film was inspired by a case in Macau in the 1980s, in which a restaurant worker murdered his employer's family and served their ground-up remains in cha siu bao (roasted pork buns).

Probably the most infamous of the collaborations between writer-director Herman Yau Lai-to and actor Anthony Wong Chau-sang, the 1993 movie was an international commercial success. It grossed 10 times its production cost of HK$2 million in overseas sales alone.

And Wong won his first best actor prize at the Hong Kong Film Awards for his depiction of the cannibalistic murderer.

Now the pair have a new offering - their 16th joint effort - which opens this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival today. Although it also is based on a true story and has some violent scenes, Ip Man: The Final Fight, is very different from their earlier collaboration, and for good reason.

"As far as I can [choose what I can] do as a filmmaker, I don't want to repeat what I've done before. I treat making films as my career. So of course I want to try something else," Yau says. And this time, Wong plays his well respected protagonist.

The Final Fight is the second of Yau's historical action dramas that have real-life wing chun master Ip Man (1893-1972) as their subject, but it is the fifth film about the kung fu master (whose students include Bruce Lee) to come out of Hong Kong in just six years.