mrrockey The Legend is Born: Ip Man is a lame, uninspired, cheap knockoff of the Wilson Yip Ip Man movies. It has absolutely no heart, soul, or emotion whatsoever. Why is it so bad? Let's take a look and rip it apart!Firstly, let's take a look at our protagonist, Ip Man played by Dennis To. In the first two films, Donnie Yen played Ip Man with a charm and sincerity with him that makes us like him and root for him throughout the film. In contrast, Dennis To's Ip Man is awkward, stiff, and stoic throughout. He lacks charisma and only seems to have one expression on his face the entire time. It's obvious they only picked him just because he resembled Donnie Yen a lot. He's pretty much the Brandon Routh of Ip Man. I'll give him credit for doing some decent kung-fu here but throughout the film, I just wanted Donnie Yen back.Secondly, the story is GOD-AWFUL in this film. The first half of this film is pretty much just a summary of Ip Man's early life where he learns Wing Chun, meets Leung Bik, falls in love etc. The second half has a lame evil Japanese plot again. The first half features WAY too many unnecessary fight scenes. Every character Ip Man meets, is a violent douchebag who wants to fight him for no good reason! The second half is just racist and boring! I'm honestly quite sick of this " evil Japanese " trope in kung-fu movies. It comes off a lot of the times as overly patriotic and racist. All in all, the story of this movie was terrible and it's obvious the writers did not give a sh!t while writing this film.Are there any good things about this movie? Sure. The fight choreography is a refreshing change of pace from the Wilson Yip films. In those movies, Ip Man is nearly superhuman in his speed and reflexes but here, the fights are a little more grounded in reality. And Yuen Biao does a good job here. That's it for the positive, I think.Overall, The Legend is Born: Ip Man is just a product meant to make a sh!t ton of money and nothing more. I'm gonna give it a 3/10.

Belishia While I am not that familiar with Hong-Kong actors, upon recognizing the face of the chap who played a thuggish-bully(which I dislike from the start till the end) in IP-Man2, in this movie, I knew that his character would be a flop and I was right!!! This chap who plays Samo Hung's student/protégé/worker in harassing other masters onto paying protection fees who teaches Kung-Fu in IP Man2, has a belligerent, thuggish, haughty character.The weird thing is, now that that this chap plays IP Man, the same character he played in IP Man2 almost resembled the character he played as Ip Man in this movie.Compare with Donnie Yen who was charismatic, this fella who plays Ip Man has the most mundane persona.Not only was this movie ain't interesting enough compare with Ip Man 2, you get the wrong man for the right movie!!! And this person could hardly be an actor.When my friends asked me "would you consider to watch a sequel", I told them "I want a refund!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Prince AJB "The Legend Is Born: Ip Man" is a film which chronicles Ip Man in his teenage years which focuses much on his learning of Wing Chun. The film is a prequel to the previous two Ip Man films which starred Donnie Yen as the titular character of Ip Man. Now, the star has been changed and the film has gotten a different style.First, let me tell you about the cast. The cast choosing here in this movie can be called really bizarre. Dennis To who became a temporary minor antagonist on "Ip Man 2" became the teenage titular character in this prequel. That totally got me shocked. It's so rare to see such happening. Then, we have some of the same cast used in the previous Ip Man films on a different role such as Sammo Hung (plays the teacher of the teenage Ip Man) and Louis Fan (plays the brother of Ip Man). That was really confusing. But, something surprised me. A character named Leung Bik was played by the son of Ip Man no other than Ip Chun. Secondly, there are quite a lot of perspectives. There are around six perspectives here which really got me confused. There's one from Ip Man, then one for his brother, his love, his other jealous love and the enemy. It really got my mind turning around. Next, the special effects were kind of cheesy. There were two scenes that showed a train leaving somewhere to somewhere. You know that those trains produce smoke. The smoke was pretty fake as it didn't suit the background. It was not good.The acting of the characters. Not bad. Dennis To on Ip Man was not bad at all. The others were also normal. Just like a normal movie. The emotions were well acted by the actors.Then we have the action scenes. They were also well directed. But, I still say the previous two films related to Ip Man still had better action scenes than this prequel. The moves were less cooler than the previous two pictures. But, it's not really cheesy. Not a problem.This movie has a different style. It has a different theme. "Ip Man" and "Ip Man 2" had the theme where the people were seeking freedom (although "Ip Man 2" was not totally about seeking freedom). Whereas, this movie has a different theme of love. For me, the freedom theme from the previous two films is only a small percent of the film. The directing and division of the emotional moments are also differently set. There's also another confusing thing. If you've watched "Ip Man" and "Ip Man 2", you might notice that the titular character of Ip Man doesn't know English at all. He didn't even speak any word in English language. But, in this PREQUEL, he is able to speak English quite fluently. He also spoke to an English or American person in this movie. That was strange and that totally made my mind confused too.Well, the movie provided some sad moments too. But, they were not so sad, they were only like 40% sad moments for me. But, if you're easy to cry, you might want to just provide a piece of tissue in case you have tears flowing down your face.The movie is different from the previous two Ip Man related films. I say this is worse than the previous ones. I'm not really satisfied with the result of the film. The previous films were much better than this. But, this movie might just entertain you with its action scenes. I half- heartedly recommend you this movie. It's still entertaining to be watched and not really a waste of time. 6 stars for this movie.

moviexclusive Producer Checkley Sin had long wanted to make a movie about Ip Man, but it wasn't until he met veteran producer Raymond Wong that his plans came to fruition. Raymond brought on board undeniably the two most crucial elements that made Ip Man and Ip Man 2 such resounding successes- lead star Donnie Yen and action director Sammo Hung. With newfound interest in the subject and his newfound credibility, the real-life Wing Chun practitioner and disciple of Ip Chun (eldest son of Ip Man) has finally been able to make his own movie about Ip Man- without for that matter, Donnie or Raymond."Ip Man: The Legend is Born" takes place before the first Ip Man movie and chronicles the younger days of the Wing Chun pugilist. From a young age, Ip Man was already learning Wing Chun from Chan Wah-Shun (played by Sammo Hung), and then subsequently from Leung Bik (played by Ip Chun) when his father sent him to Hong Kong's St Stephen's College to study. Unlike the first two movies which arguably took some creative liberties with Ip Man's story, this prequel tries to be a more accurate biography of the life of the Grandmaster.I say more accurate because audiences should know that though this film takes itself very seriously, sometimes too seriously, as a biography of Ip Man, it is only a semi-biography. Those familiar with Ip Man's history will immediately know that he had no adopted brother by the name of Ip Tin- Chi (played by Louis Fan Siu-Wong) and by extension, no romantic triangle with Tin-Chi and a fellow disciple (Rose Chan). Why these characters were added into the film becomes clear only much later- but this also ultimately proves to be its undoing.For almost two-thirds of the film, director Herman Yau sets up an interesting premise about the rivalry between descendant schools of the same martial arts form. Leung Bik was in fact Chan Wah-Shun's elder fellow-disciple, and son of Wah-Shun's master Leung Jan. When Ip Man returns to Foshan after learning a modified form of Wing Chun from Leung Bik, Brother Chung Sok (Yuen Biao) who is in charge of the Wing Chun school after Wah-Shun's passing objects to Ip Man's new techniques and declares those movies unfitting to be called Wing Chun.The opposition among different schools of Wing Chun is no doubt an interesting and in fact prescient topic to explore, considering how the number of Wing Chun schools would have increased dramatically in recent years following the success of the Ip Man movies. How many of them can claim to be teaching authentic Wing Chun? Have the techniques been modified over the years? Does any form of refinements in fact dilute their essence? Despite a promising discourse on the subject between Chung Sok and Ip Man, screenwriter Erica Li abruptly casts the matter aside in favor of more dramatic tension by way of Ip Man and Ip Man 2.Ah yes, both Ip Man and its sequel advocated a strong sense of nationalistic pride for the Chinese as Ip Man fought against the Japanese in the first movie and the 'gwai-los' in the sequel. The threat of the Japanese is once again revived in this prequel- which accounts for the sudden change in tone in the last third of the film- as someone close to Ip Man turns out to be more than meets the eye. Yes, the filmmakers have tried to work in a twist at the end, but it is not only rushed, it is also unconvincing.It doesn't help that the climax is only barely more interesting than the rest of the unspectacular fight sequences in the movie. Though the film tries to showcase some rarely before seen Wing Chun techniques, these are lost amidst a bland performance by Dennis To. He may bear the physical resemblance to Donnie Yen, but Dennis lacks Donnie's screen charisma and acting prowess. Obviously imitating Donnie's understated performance as Ip Man, Dennis takes it one step too far by not injecting enough emotion especially in the fight sequences. Sure Dennis can fight, but by playing it too low-key, one never gets the sense that Ip Man is in any sort of real trouble.But really, the fault isn't with Dennis since neither director Herman Yau, screenwriter Erica Li nor of course producer Checkley Sin seem adventurous enough to move out of the shadow cast by the earlier two Ip Man movies. So the cast remains largely similar (except for swapping of roles), the theme remains largely similar and Dennis tries to portray similarly Donnie Yen's performance as Ip Man. That's a shame- given that there is much wasted potential here that could have been used to take this prequel in a bold new direction away from the earlier films. This prequel could very well have taken a leaf from its own advice from Ip Man to Chung Sok- without change, how can there be progress? Indeed, how true.