Movie Review: The Legend is Born – Ip Man/葉問前傳

The Legend of Ip Man reads something like this:

Once upon a time there was a country called Japan. Japan was evil (it still is). Japan is so evil that young Chinese kids were having nightmares about Japanese people in 1905.

Japan is so evil that they would send 12 year-olds to China as spies.In boxes.

Japanese people are evil. Because they have sh*tty haircuts. They’re so evil that one Japanese character, played by Kenya Sawada, apparently is wearing Bernice Liu’s bob wig fromBad Blood . He probably stole it. You know how those people are.

More proof lies (because Japan is all about lies) in the fact that Bernice Liu is also in the movie as a Japanese person with another sh*tty wig.

Aha! Proof!

You want more proof of Japan’s evil, militant nature?

Kenya Sawada invokes the samurai spirit in The Legend is Born – Ip Man/葉問前傳. He invokes the Bushido code in Shinjuku Incident!

More proof of Japan’s evil militancy!

They are evil!

And militant!

**Or its simply proof that both of those movies were made for the Big Red Market, which usually involves dispensing with truth, reason, and intellect.

Because when Ip Man says that young people must never forget the past, you know that he really means Japan.**

He sure as f@#$ doesn’t mean the Great Leap Backward or the Cultural Revolution or the Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People’s Republic of China, signed on September 29, 1972, in which Article 5 reads “The Government of the People’s Republic of China declares that in the interest of the friendship between the Chinese and the Japanese peoples, it renounces its demand for war reparation from Japan.”

But let me tell you a different legend.

There once was a director named Herman Yau (there still is).

He’s made a lot of movies.

He’s made a  lot of good movies.

He’s made some movies that weren’t so good.

But he has also lately managed to make a lot of movies good that probably had no right being as good as he made them.

Herman Yau kicks ass on a legendary scale. He made Lethal Ninja. And Rebellion.

**He’s kicked a lot more ass than Johnnie To these last few years, I’ll tell you that much.

How’s that croissant, Monsieur To?**

And because of that, T he Legend is Born – Ip Man/葉問前傳 is nowhere near the Party ShrimpingFest it set out to be.

Yes, the film’s handling of Japan is wildly reductionistic and oversimplistic and wrong and dumb and such gross propaganda that normally I’d be having an aneurysm.

But thanks to Herman Yau, the film is entertainingand funny. I’ll hazard an assertion that he knows his portrayals are silly.

Because they’re stylishlysilly. These cartoonish abominations are so overwrought, so overstated, that you realize he did it intentionally. Herman knows what he has to do to please the Big Red Market. But he also knows how patently stupid and atavistic it is, and you can see that in his film.

So I wasn’t insulted. I was amused. I was even entertained. And when the film tried for the big Red Japan Bash, I howled derisively, because that, I think, is what Herman wanted me to do.

T he Legend is Born – Ip Man/葉問前傳

is funny, interesting, and populated by people and characters you can actually like.

The first, and biggest nod, goes to Ip Chun, Ip Man’s real-life son. He plays an irascible store manager who teaches the (character) Ip Man some new twists. He’s old, he’s real, and he’s not an actor by trade. But so what? He’s Ip Chun.

Yuen Biao is here. It’s always a good thing for me to see him onscreen. Because he’s Yuen Biao.

Fan Siu Wong finally shows up to fight again in an Ip Man movie. He’s been in all three! In a very Young & Dangerous-esque bit of character swapping for the same actor, he’s managed to attach himself to this franchise as 3 different people. He gets a chance to act in this one. And he does pretty well for himself.

To Yu Hang plays Ip Man.

Again.

Still.

But his kung fu is legendary.

How legendary?

It is so formidable that a white guy tells him “Your kung fu is formidable.”

I don’t give a f@#$ if it was the 1920s, no English-speaking person on earth ever said that sentence.

But don’t listen to me. I’m obviously biased because I don’t think Japan is an awful place. I just think they’re awfully good at football, and I knowChina isn’t.

Know what’s in the World Cup? Deez nuts.

In case you’re wondering, yes, I am going to keep beating this dead horse as long as China beats theirs.

But if they get Herman to direct more of their movies, I’ll still go see them.