Review | Ip Man 4: The Finale film review – Donnie Yen goes to Chinatown in solemn conclusion to martial arts series

Film serves as understated coda to the saga of Ip Man as, ageing and diagnosed with cancer, he fights his way through 1960s San Francisco

Despite being set in Bruce Lee’s hometown, Ip’s pupil is a peripheral figure in a story that’s full of holes and inconsequential fights, yet still satisfying

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Donnie Yen and Scott Adkins in a still from Ip Man 4: The Finale (category IIB; Cantonese, English, Mandarin), directed by Wilson Yip. Wu Yue co-stars.

Published: 7:09pm, 18 Dec 2019Updated: 7:25pm, 18 Dec 2019

3/5 stars

Donnie Yen Ji-dan gives a memorably solemn performance in this fourth and final instalment of the popular martial arts series, which has catapulted him to superstardom since the first film in 2008. For all that the actor has had stellar parts in the Star Wars series and Disney’s upcoming Mulan film, Yen’s portrayal of the venerable wing chun kung fu master will, without a doubt, remain the definitive role of his film career.

Ip Man 4: The Finale reunites director Wilson Yip Wai-shun with Ip Man 3 action choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, and tells a rather contrived story in which an ailing Ip takes a trip to San Francisco and ends up in hand-to-hand combat with a US Army sergeant he has never met before. Despite having the weakest narrative of the four films, it does a decent job of providing closure for Yen’s beloved character.

The year is 1964 and Ip (Yen), having lost his loving wife towards the end of Ip Man 3, receives his own cancer diagnosis in an early scene. Drawn by an invitation from his student Bruce Lee (Danny Chan Kwok-kwan) to attend the latter’s demonstration at a karate tournament, as well as the hope of finding his rebellious younger son Ching (Ye He) a school, Ip soon finds himself in a foreign land plagued by racism.

Although Yip offered viewers a glimpse of the adult Lee in Ip Man 3 and set this film in his hometown, the director keeps the focus on Ip, his teacher. Aside from a very brief re-enactment of Lee’s one-inch punch and two-finger push-up demonstrations, and a back-alley fight with a random challenger that allows him to play around with a nunchaku, Lee remains a peripheral figure in the film.

Instead, Ip Man 4 revolves around two other martial arts practitioners who land Ip in unlikely fights. One is Chinese Benevolent Association chairman Wan Zonghua (Wu Yue of Paradox ), whose recommendation letter is, we’re told, indispensable to Ip’s effort to find a school for his son in San Francisco. Incidentally, Wan is also a tai chi master who resents Ip for allowing his apprentice Lee to teach non-Chinese kung fu.