Trailer
Plot summary
In 1935 the city of Foshan is a center of Southern Chinese martial arts, and the schools' students test themselves against each other. Ip Man, the town's most skilled martial artist, keeps a low profile and builds his reputation through friendly, closed-door matches with other masters. A local troublemaker named Yuan, retrieving a kite from the Ip family's backyard, watches Ip defeat the master Liu and spreads the news, embarrassing Liu. When the Imperial Japanese Army occupies Foshan, the Ip family is moved into a decrepit apartment, and Ip takes work at a coal mine beside Lin. General Miura sets up fights between Chinese martial artists and his trainees, with a bag of rice as the prize, and the interpreter Li Zhao invites Ip to take part.
Cast
- Tenma Shibuyaas Colonel Sato
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Ip Man (2008)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- In a planned 1998 Ip Man film, Donnie Yen signed on to star as Ip Man with Stephen Chow co-starring as Bruce Lee, and had already received part of his acting fee when the studio producing it closed and the project was abandoned.
- Donnie Yen was injured while rehearsing a fight scene when an axe wielder accidentally slashed the side of his left eye, and he kept a masseur on set because he could not raise his right shoulder.
- Japanese actor Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, a judo black belt, found working under choreographer Sammo Hung difficult and suffered a mild concussion in one scene after taking four consecutive blows from fight co-ordinator Edward 'Sweco' Chan.
- The film's title was disputed because Wong Kar-wai was developing his own Ip Man film, The Great Master, with Tony Leung Chiu-wai as Ip; producer Raymond Wong wanted to call his film Grandmaster Yip Man, too close to Wong Kar-wai's title.
- The film was never meant as a true biography of Ip Man: most of the plot's central turns, including the duels between Ip Man and the Japanese and his Second Sino-Japanese War hardships, were there only to make the movie more exciting.
- Donnie Yen spent months preparing to play Ip Man by eating one meal a day, training in Wing Chun and learning about Ip Man from his two sons, and stayed in character after filming, wearing his costume and changing his voice.
- Unable to find a suitable cotton factory to shoot in, set designers spent weeks transforming an abandoned Shanghai storeroom into the Zhen Hua Cotton Mill Factory, the mill where Ip Man first taught Wing Chun openly to the public.
