Ip Man: Kung Fu Legend - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Ip Man: Kung Fu Legend

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
I jokingly said this about 5 or 6 years ago when the Ip Man mania started taking over, but Ip Man is the new Wong Fei Hung. Dead for over half a century, but thanks to the rise of Donnie Yen’s superlative performance of the character, he has taken new life in cinemas. Hong Kong and mainland China alike are pumping out knockoff film after film in order to capitalize on the name, with some of them being good. And others….well...some of those are at least passable. Ip Man: Kung Fu Legend is one of the latter. It’s not unwatchable, and it’s not a GREAT representation of the iconic teacher of Bruce Lee, but it’s a reasonably passable martial arts film that falls prey to a lot of the problems that mainland Chinese action films struggle with.

While Ip Man was most certainly a real person, and he did some cool things according to historical records, his life was HEAVILY fictionalized in the Donnie Yen films. But even more so fictionalized in all of the “knock off” (what I’m calling the non-Yen films) ones, to the point of becoming a superhero. And it seems that instead of creating a side story of the Donnie Yen movies, this one simply reboots and reworks events of the second film, and just makes something completely different. Just with a substantially smaller budget and not anywhere near the storytelling chops (seriously? Hong Kong had a writers guild?).

Taking place in the generalized 1950s, Ip Man (Yu-Hang To) has moved from Foshan to Hong Kong, where he attempts to set up a martial arts school. After besting the local masters' tests, he gets drawn into a turf war when a British gangster named Pike (Steven Dasz) comes in to strong-arm the Martial Arts Association of Hong Kong out of their land. Starting out simple and sweet at first, Pike works his way up to murder and conspiracy when he snakes Lei Yihu (Addison Ford) out of the association and gets the man to double-cross the head of the group. And at first it seems to work. The head of the association is dead, Ip Man is framed for the crime, and Pike looks like he’s going to get away with it. But this is an Ip Man film, so naturally the famed Kung Fu legend decides to take matters into his own hands and beat the truth out of Pike to pick up where legal justice has failed.

As is the case with many mainland Chinese films (and modern Hong Kong films as well after the independent city transitioned back to being a Chinese city years ago), Ip Man: Kung Fu Legend is overly jingoistic, with a slapdash attempt to pay lip service to tradition, while fictionalizing events to the point of being ludicrous. Skirmishes between schools have always been a controversial bit of history at best (at least during the 20th century), but it dives into near DnD levels, with every association on earth having a guild. The action is decent, but relies on slow motion overuse (sometimes entire battles are filmed in slo-mo) and some rather sloppy costuming (outfits that didn’t exist until the 90s, and being a gun guy, I found it amusing that all the 1911s used in the film were heavily modified ones with rails on them. A type of 1911 that wasn’t released till the mid 90s to early 2000s, and I’m PRETTY sure G10 grips weren’t a thing in the 1950s). As such, this is just a silly affair with some passable fights.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

IMDB information is pretty minimal, but it appears to be a digital shoot using MOST LIKELY Arri Alexa cameras and finished at a 2K master for home video. (Although, the aspect ratio is wrong on IMDB so that could mean that anything else listed is wrong, and this COULD be a 4K master as it makes no sense considering the source cameras, but who knows). The Blu-ray looks great, and pretty much pushes the limitations of Blu-ray to the max. And while I noticed a few flakes of banding and crush in darker shots, it was so minimal as to be nearly imperceptible. Colors really pop when needed (the blues of an embroidered outfit, or the bright red of the Chinese dragon costumes). Blacks are deep and inky, and outside of the minuscule banding and crush, I could find zero imperfections in this 1080p image.






Audio:

The disc features a really punchy and robust Dolby Atmos track in Mandarin, as well as a 5.1 DTS-HD MA English dub as well. Personally, I’m going with the Mandarin track due to the expanded soundstage, but also due to the fact that the dub is sorta mediocre. The surround activity is really impressive here, with a wide and low-reaching mix that has fisticuffs and score alike coming through rears and overheads with ease. There’s also some really cool minor ambient effects utilized, such as the beaded curtain rattling in the opening fights, as well as some feet sliding around the floors during combat. LFE punches hard and heavy during fights, rattling doors and teeth alike when punches land. Dialog is strong and cleanly replicated in the front of the room as expected, and I found no problem with the fairly wide dynamic range.

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Extras:

• Theatrical Trailer

Final Score: ​

I’m a huge fan of martial arts cinema, and I don’t put TOO much stock in storyline in them. The story is generally just a vehicle to get to the fight scenes. But here, the fights are only moderately decent, so the outlandish story gets even more attention than it should, resulting in a lackluster viewing experience. Yu-Hnag To does a good job with the fights, but they couldn’t even be bothered to get the villains dubbed by someone who speaks British English (all the villains are Brits), as all the white villains are actually played by Argentinian’s and an Irish dude. The Blu-ray disc looks and sounds great though, but paired with the near-nonexistent extras and the weak story, I’d put this in the “only watch if you’re an Ip Man stan” category.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Adam Sandler, Kate Beckinsale, Sean Astin, Christopher Walken
Directed by: Liming Li
Written by: Yu-Hang To, Phillip Condron, Steven Dasz
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 AVC
Audio: Mandarin: Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core), English DTS-HD MA 5.1, Mandarin, English DD 2.0
Subtitles: English, French, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional)
Studio: Well Go USA
Rated: NR
Runtime: 98 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: July 14th, 2026

Recommendation: Rental