Released: June 2022
Directors: Li Xi Jie, Zhang Zhu Lin
Run Time: 87 Minutes
Not Rated
Distributor: Well Go USA
Genre: Action
Cast:
Tse Miu: Ip Man
Chen Guanying: Hu Bufeng
Sergio Deieso
As an avowed fan of the martial arts and martial arts movies in general, I have a real affinity for Kung-Fu movies in particular. Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, and Donnie Yen are among the most well-known martial artists in the world. I love the different eras of Kung-Fu movies. You have the legendary Shaw Brothers era from the 60s until the 80s, then it moves to Golden Harvest which also produced some of the greatest action movies this world has ever seen. Hong Kong was the undisputed location for martial arts movies. At least until the early 2000s. Sadly, it seems that over the last 15 years, the quality of Kung-Fu movies has deteriorated unless Donnie Yen, Sammo Hung, Cory Yuen, or Yuen Woo Ping are involved. Maybe it’s because of China’s direct involvement with the making of these movies, but I get the uneasy feeling that some of the more recent Kung-Fu movies like Unity of Heroes or Kung Fu League have been influenced by some of the worst action movie tropes that have plagued a large number of western productions. Shaky-cam, hyper-fast editing, and poor camera-work have been a huge problem in some of Hong Kong’s more recent productions, and I don’t know why. Hong Kong set the standard for action, but now they’re falling in line with everybody else. Ip Man: Kung Fu Master was one of the more recent…casualties of this style of film-making, and the latest entry, Ip Man: The Awakening is no different. It’s better, but that’s not saying much.
The movie follows a younger Ip Man when he inadvertently interrupts a gang of human traffickers, resulting in a retaliation from the gang’s leader. This is NOT a Ip Man movie despite the title. It doesn’t feel like one. Neither did the last movie. It’s like the film-makers are making up crazy stories to throw Ip Man into the mix. I don’t think the film-makers really understand who Ip Man was. While the Donnie Yen movies certainly weren’t realistic, there were elements in those movies that were tied to reality, because some of those elements were a part of the grandmaster’s life. Donnie Yen once said that he would no longer play Ip Man after the second movie, because he feared that the market would become oversaturated with Ip Man movies. Well, he did come back for the third and fourth movies, which were awesome in their own way. But those stories, while not realistic, were really compelling, because the film-makers understood Ip Man as a person. Grandmaster Ip Man was one of the most respected martial artists in Southern China, with his unique style of Wing Chun. He taught Bruce Lee, for crying out loud. The story presented in this movie is incredibly rote, generic, and uninspired. Human trafficking is a real serious issue, and while I don’t have issues with action movies using that issue as the thrust for a plot, The Awakening doesn’t take it seriously enough for the audience to care.
The acting in this movie is bad. Real bad. Chen Guanying, who plays Bufeng, Ip Man’s friend, is saddled with a terrible script as his character is one of the most annoying characters I’ve ever seen. Bufeng is a coward, weak-willed, and easily manipulated. Sergio Deieso plays the main villain…and this guy is a real joke. He’s incredibly soft-spoken, which can be terrifying with better writing, but he’s clearly a cardboard cutout villain that doesn’t come across as any sort of threat. His henchmen are more intimidating, but not by a whole lot. The only actor here that really pulls his weight is Tse Miu as Ip Man. Not only can he handle himself physically, as his fight scenes are decent enough, but he can act. But as good as Tse Miu is, he doesn’t hold a candle to how Donnie Yen played the character. Even Anthony Wong, Tony Leung, Tony Leung, and Dennis To were better. Tse did his best, but what he was given was not very good.
I can absolutely say that the action in this movie is a hell of a lot better than Ip Man: Kung Fu Master. While it does suffer from too many close-up shots and hyper-fast editing, the choreography isn’t that bad. Tse Miu’s command of Wing Chun is surprisingly impressive. But…he uses moves that are NOT a part of Wing Chun’s arsenal. I know that because I’ve studied Wing Chun for a while. BUT, it still pretty cool to see it in action. What really surprises me about this movie is how it shines a light on a particular martial arts style that isn’t really well-known: Bartitsu. It was developed in England at the turn of the century from 1898-1902. It combines elements of jiujitsu, French kickboxing, cane fighting, and boxing. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle mentioned it in one of his Sherlock Holmes stories. It was also featured prominently in Guy Ritchie’s film adaptation of the character starring Robert Downey, Jr. It’s a real thing, but most people don’t really know about it. It’s actually pretty cool to see. If there’s one bright spot in this movie, it’s that the movie’s villain use bartitsu. I wasn’t expecting that, so that was awesome. Yet, despite the addition of bartitsu, the final confrontation between Ip Man and the lead trafficker is less than impressive. I don’t know if they ran out of time or didn’t have the budget, but the action in this movie is simply…ok. And that’s an issue in a movie that’s supposed to be about Ip Man.
Ip Man: The Awakening is yet another example of a Hong Kong industry that doesn’t seem to care about the kind of movies that put it on the map. Kung-Fu movies have been a very steady decline over the past decade, and it saddens me, because there’s still a lot that this kind of film-making can still offer. There’s so many stories to be told with Kung-Fu, but Hong Kong and China’s over-reliance on certain characters keeps the genre from moving forward. Now, we’ve got movies from Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, even India that are now taking Hong Kong’s place as the top of the martial arts film. Even though The Awakening is only 87 minutes long, I can’t really recommend it. It’s just another middle-of-the-road Kung-Fu movie that adds almost NOTHING to the genre, except for the aforementioned bartitsu style. Don’t waste your time or money on this one. Stick with Donnie Yen’s Ip Man movies, even at their worst, they are leagues ahead of this.