So, it's been several years since Ip Man and his family have moved to Hong Kong. Ip runs a kung fu school part time while taking care of his wife and youngest son. One day, he has to go to his son's school to find out his son has been fighting with another boy. Ip apologizes and watches over the other boy until the boy's father shows up. It turns out the father also is a practitioner of Wing Chun, Cheung and is an underground fighter. A mob boss played by Mike Tyson wants to own the school for reasons and sends his lackeys to take care of it. However, Ip Man shows up in time to protect the school. He and several kung fu students watch over the school until the thugs kidnap Ip's son. Ip goes to deal with the thugs and has to fight against many opponents until the Cheung shows up. They deal with the thugs and recover their sons. Ip Man is tired of being bullied and goes to Mike Tyson to talk things over. However, Mike Tyson decides to duke it out with Ip Man, if he goes 3 minutes without going down, Mike Tyson will leave Ip and the school alone. Ip Man manages to do just that and the two go their separate ways. Meanwhile, Ip's wife Wing Sing is diagnosed with cancer and only has months to live. So, Ip Man decides to stay by his wife until she passes. However, Cheung manages to open a school and declare that Ip Man is not using authentic Wing Chun. Ip's wife sets up a match so that Ip's reputation is not ruined. Ip fights the other master and wins. Wing Sing dies and Ip Man becomes a full time Wing Chun instructor.
The Good:
The fight scenes like in the previous movies are just amazing to watch. Donnie Yen is an awesome actor and you just feel everything he has to go through in this movie. Some of the locations and set pieces are pretty neat, making the fights even more engaging to watch.
The Bad:
The writers failed to even remotely tell a decent story. The plot is all over the place and it's hard to tell who's who sometimes. Mike Tyson is a terrible bad guy and isn't very convincing. Wing Sing reverts back to her bitchy attitude in this movie and pretty much disapproves of Ip Man's decisions and so I don't feel bad for saying I'm glad she died in this movie. Cheung as a Wing Chun master is a neat idea, but they've already did this in another unrelated Ip Man movie. They also tease Bruce Lee not once, but twice in this movie and he's still not a student of Ip Man. Bruce looks like he's in his 30s and Ip Man hasn't taken him? In real life Bruce Lee was 16 and already learning Wing Chun. And yes, the fights are awesome, but like the last two movies, the writers decided that Ip Man needs to take on an insane amount of bad guys without breaking a sweat again. I get the movie is kind of going over his life, but I find it highly unrealistic that Ip Man was constantly fighting hordes of thugs all the time. Back to Mike Tyson. Lazy writing. We had Ip Man fight a racist boxer in the second movie, why do we need to see it again? And the whole point of Mike Tyson was what? He had maybe three scenes total and his goal was to get a school. The whole movie was one giant mess.
Overall:
Ip Man 3 really dropped the ball on this one. As I said, the plot's a mess, some of the characters are either pointless or forgot that they had a change of heart. Personally, this was a major let down considering the first two movies were pretty great. If you want to watch it, don't waste any money.
Rating:
2 wasted opportunities to use Bruce Lee out of 5.
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