Sunday, June 17, 2012

Ip Man 2 (2010)

  Ip Man 2 is the sequel to the Ip Man movie once again directed by Wilson Yip.This is now the 5th collaboration with Donnie Yen.Their credits include SPL aka Killzone,Flashpoint (rumored to be a prequel of Killzone),Dragon Tiger Gate,Ip Man.The movie has most of the returning actors from the first Ip Man. Sammo Hung,Lo Meng (Five Venoms,Kid With Golden Arm),Fung Hak On(Magnificent Butcher,Last Hurrah for Chivalry,Five Shaolin Masters),Darren Shalavi,(Mortal Kombat Web Series,Tai Chi Boxer)Kent Cheng(Once Upon a Time in China),Dennis To Yue(Ip Man Legend Begins),Huang Xiao Ming (Sammo Hung's son).

  After years of Ip Man's escape from Mainland China.He relocates to Hong Kong to live in poverty.Ip is trying to make ends meet and wants to teach Wing Chun to students.After he has some recognition he must get permission from the other masters to teach and prove himself that he can.One of the masters is played by Sammo Hung who is an expert at Hung Fist.At the same time Hong Kong is ruled by the British and make the Chinese work for little money.There is an event boxing match of Britain's famous Boxer Twister (Shahlavi) who is an arrogant selfish bully.He ridicules the Chinese martial artists at the boxing event and ends up hurting a couple.Master Hung decides to counter and go into a match with Twister.Twister has killed      Master Hung in the ring and now Ip Man must prove that Chinese martial arts can defeat Western boxing.

 The fighting is superb.Combines both Wire Fu and Kung Fu and the editing never looked better.Donnie gets to fight with Shaw Brother's legends Lo Meng and Fung Hak On,even though the fights were short and they are both in their 60s,they are still in top form.Sammo's fight with Donnie is different from the one in Killzone because they fight in a round table and have very limited space.Later on they become friends instead of wanting to kill each other.Huang Xiao Ming plays Donnie's disciple Wong Shun Leng.His fighting isn't bad but to be Sammo's son he's got to prove himself.Dennis To from the Ip Man prequel plays Sammo Hung's main disciple.It is one of his first films and he later proves in the prequel that he can throw down some serious Wing Chun and can also be a major kung fu star like Wu Jing.This movie put Darren Shalahvi's career on the map.Appearing in the Webisode of Mortal Kombat playing Kano and fighting along with Michael Jai White.Darren had more roles in B movies with Steve Austin and Steven Seagal.At least he is out there being recognized instead of being in crappy cameos in Zack Snyder movies like 300 and Watchmen.If you blink you probably missed his cameo appearance.This is one of the best Kung Fu movies in years along with True Legend,Ip Man prequel,Reign of Assassins.Donnie is in talks to do more Ip Man movies so stay tuned.

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