IP Man 4: The Finale (2020)

One of my favorite and most recent martial arts series has been the IP Man films which tells the story and journey of the Grandmaster who taught Bruce Lee everything he knew. The last film challenge I did, I covered the first three films and thought there was no better time than now to check out the fourth and final film IP Man 4: The Grand Finale which was directed by Wilson Yip who has directed all the films in the series. The film once again stars Donnie Yen (IP Man) as the title character, but in this film he has found out some terrible news about his health. At first he rejected an offer to fly to San Francisco to see his most famous pupil Bruce Lee (Danny Kwok-Kwan Chan) compete in a karate tournament. Although with the recent news, he takes Bruce on his offer only to look for schools for his son, but he soon finds out that not everything is kosher in San Francisco. The film also stars Scott Adkins (Ninja: Shadow of a Tear) as Barton Geddes, Vanness Wu (Dragon Squad) as Hartman, Vanda Margraf in her debut role as Wan Yonah, Yue Wu (Journey To The West) as Wan Zong Hua, Chris Collins (The Trough) as Colin Frater, He Ye (Mao Zedong 1949) as IP Ching, Meng Lo (The Grandmaster) as Master Law, and Grace Englert (Philophobia) as Becky.

All of these films are excellent and I have enjoyed every single one of them whether it's 100% true or not. I loved how every film in the series brought someone unique in true Kung Fu style to be the big bad villain in the film. There was Mike Tyson in IP Man 3, Darren Shahlavi in IP Man 2, and Hiroyuki Ikeuchi in the very first film. So who were they going to get to be the big bad in this film? Well at first it seemed like a video game with all the different levels and bosses before you get to the main, but in the end it was Scott Adkins who played a racist Marine who was ultra aggressive and a believer of Karate. All of the fights in the film were unbelievable and amazing, it was so cool to see all of the fight choreography that went into making this film awesome. The fight between Yen and Adkins was absolutely dramatic in every sense and they did it with not just punches, kicks, slams, and breaks, but emotion as well. One huge theme in the film was definitely racism as the Chinese faced it all the time back in the 60's and 70's and this film definitely exposes a lot of it. If you know anything about Bruce Lee then you definitely know that he faced a lot of the racism back in his time which is why he went to Hong Kong to be a Kung Fu star that he would ultimately become. I think you should definitely give this one a watch, it is well worth it. I am going to give the film an A- for a final grade.