Ip Man 2

B-

Directed by Wilson Yip

Donnie Yen is back as legendary wing chun master Ip Man in "Ip Man 2: Ip Man is Broke". OK, that's not the real title of the movie but I still think it's better than simply "Ip Man 2". Wilson Yip's latest intallment of the "Ip Man" franchise is, like its predecessor, an exciting ride that nonetheless suffers from a thin script and nonexistent character development.

Having escaped mainland China, Ip Man settles in Hong Kong with his son and wife who is expecting a second child. Ip Man tries to open a martial arts school but has little success in recruiting new students, leading to dire financial straits for the family. On top of that, the local masters won't let him open a school without first proving his worth and then paying onerous membership dues. Menwhile, the local British police chief is setting up a East meets West boxing gala where, you guessed it, Ip Man will be forced, despite his inate pacifism, to step into the ring.

"Ip Man 2" follows, almost to a tee, the plot of the first "Ip Man". Ip Man tries to set up a martials arts club, fights some other local masters, then gets embroilled in a staged fight featuring a "foreign devil" (this time English rather than Japanese). The paper thin plot is not that big of a deal since "Ip Man 2" is concerned solely with delivering the goods when it comes to fights scenes and in this regard, Yip's film is as solid as the first installment of "Ip Man". Once again, Donnie Yen's skills are on impressive display and many of the fight scenes are fantastic, in particular Ip Man's faceoff against Hong Kong's other masters in a fight that takes place entirely on a small round table at the center of a room. On the other hand, the "villain" in this installment of "Ip Man", the nefarious "Twister", while being a hilariously over the top character you might expect to find in WWE RAW, is not much of a fighter which robs the film's closing scenes of some "punch" so to speak. Furthermore, the character development in "Ip Man 2" is even less convincing then in "Ip Man" which means it's pretty much nonexistent. I fully realize that martial arts films aren't there to provide in depth, nuanced character sketches but the slipshod way Yip treats many of his characters, most notably Simon Yam's (who is totally wasted in this movie), was unimpressive.