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

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.

The other is US Marines staff sergeant Hartman (Vanness Wu Jian-hao), a student of Lee’s, who is determined to bring wing chun into the army’s training programme despite the staunch opposition of his racist superior Barton Geddes (Scott Adkins), who despises the Chinese martial art tradition (but who, together with instructor Colin Frater (Chris Collins), has curiously little issue embracing another Asian martial art in karate).

At once unrealistic and utterly predictable, the story of Ip Man 4 gets Yen into battles against Wu Yue, Collins, and Adkins, which are well-choreographed yet inconsequential. It speaks to the drift that has beset the series that Yip and Yen appear undecided over what to make of the character’s vulnerability: Ip is suffering from cancer and supposedly aged 71 in the story, but you could never tell it from his fight scenes.

Indeed, the only weakness that Ip is allowed to display in battles is a fresh arm injury that the character sustains while saving Wan’s wayward daughter, Yonah (Vanda Margraf), from racist schoolyard bullies. For audiences who enjoyed the heart-warming family drama in the past three films, the bond between Ip and Yonah, and by extension Ip’s growing understanding for his own son, may well be the best part of this story.

For all its flaws and implausible plot, Ip Man 4 does provide just the understated conclusion the character of Ip deserves. While hardly a necessary sequel, it again shows how the role fits Yen in both dramatic and physical terms – even amid an ensemble of crudely sketched characters, his Ip Man still effortlessly proves the main attraction with his unusual blend of humility and invincibility. He will be missed.

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