Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019) Review: A Dignified Last Bow

Is Ip Man 4: The Finale worth watching?

Yes, with reservations. Ip Man 4: The Finale gives Donnie Yen’s wing chun master a dignified farewell and some of the series’ most satisfying fights, even though the drama around them is the bluntest of the four films. Moving the story to San Francisco hands the franchise a fresh backdrop and a clear subject, the prejudice Chinese immigrants faced in America. The trouble is that the film makes its case with a sledgehammer: nearly every American character is a sneering bigot, which flattens the tension it is trying to build.

What is Ip Man 4: The Finale about?

Ip Man 4: The Finale finds Ip Man (Donnie Yen) widowed and worried about his teenage son’s future. He travels from Hong Kong to San Francisco to look for a school that will take the boy, and lands in the middle of a feud. His former student Bruce Lee (Danny Chan Kwok-kwan) has angered Chinatown’s old guard by teaching kung fu to non-Chinese students, and the community’s most powerful master, played by Wu Yue, has little patience for a visitor who might take Lee’s side.

A second thread follows a Chinese-American Marine (Vanness Wu) who wants martial arts added to military training, against the open contempt of a fellow Marine played by Scott Adkins. The two stories run side by side until the film’s themes of respect and belonging pull them together.

Wilson Yip directs, completing the run of four films he and Yen have built around the real-life teacher. It is a Hong Kong and mainland Chinese production, and it runs a lean 105 minutes.

Donnie Yen makes stillness the main event

By the fourth film Yen has refined Ip Man into something close to a moral posture. He barely raises his voice, stands very straight, and lets his hands do the talking. The performance is at its best in the quiet moments between fights: an older man far from home, polite to people who insult him, calculating how much dignity he can afford to spend on his son’s behalf. Yen plays that restraint as strength rather than blandness, which is why the series has held together for four instalments.

The action remains the reason most viewers come, and it delivers. The choreography is crisp and legible, built on the close-quarters trapping and rapid chain punches that define wing chun, and the camera lets whole exchanges play out without chopping them into fragments. A confrontation with Wu Yue’s master is staged as much as an argument between two philosophies as a fight between two men, and it is one of the best-judged scenes in the franchise.

Danny Chan, who first played Bruce Lee in Ip Man 3, gets more to do here. His Lee is cocky, restless and very funny, a clear homage built on the star’s famous mannerisms, and his scenes supply energy whenever the film’s dignity threatens to stiffen into solemnity.

Scott Adkins earns his place as the foil

The film needed an opponent who could credibly test its hero, and Adkins, one of the most gifted screen fighters working in Western action cinema, provides one. He brings real speed and weight to his scenes, so the threat feels physical rather than theoretical. Vanness Wu’s Marine is a more interesting character on paper, caught between two worlds, and his thread gives the film a way to talk about identity that is not entirely about Chinatown.

Where the message drowns out the drama

The script’s weakness is subtlety, or its absence. The film’s American characters, from officials to schoolyard bullies, are written as slurs with legs, and a subplot about a Chinese-American girl harassed at school is staged in such broad strokes that it plays as melodrama. The anger underneath is legitimate, but the storytelling never allows a single white character any complexity, and that turns a promising portrait of immigrant life into a fable with a clear score to settle. The father-and-son strand, which should give the finale its emotional weight, is handled mostly at a distance and lands with less force than it should.

Who should watch Ip Man 4: The Finale?

Fans who have followed the series will get the most from it; the farewell only carries full weight if you know the man Yen has spent a decade building. Newcomers can follow the plot, but they will be better served starting at the beginning. At 105 minutes it is a brisk watch. Expect frequent hard-hitting fights and racist language and bullying, though the violence is rarely graphic.

If it works for you, three places to go next:

• Ip Man (2008), still the series’ strongest blend of drama and action.
• Ip Man 3, the chapter immediately before this one, which introduces Chan’s Bruce Lee.
• Flash Point, a harder-edged Yip and Yen cop thriller with a rougher, more modern fighting style.

The verdict

Ip Man 4: The Finale is a satisfying close to a much-loved martial arts series: elegantly fought, anchored by Yen’s calm authority, and livened by Adkins and Chan. Its cardboard villains and heavy messaging keep it below the first film, but as a farewell to one of modern kung fu cinema’s great screen heroes, it does the job with grace.

Rating: 3.5/5