IP Man 2 Review

Donnie Yen returns for a second bout of vigorous, crunchy combat in a thoroughly enjoyable beatquel. Set just before the Bruce Lee-mentoring years, Ip Man’s now moved to British-ruled Hong Kong, where bent cops and the local martial-arts mafia sabotage his fledgling Wing Chun school. Midway there’s an astonishing series of winner-stays-on boss battles on a rickety table top, before the film thrusts into a Wing Chun vs. boxing showdown (a flagrant cultural face-off between Chinese decency and Western colonial brashness). Hammy Brit baddies, but what the hell — Yen’s one of the great wonders of the action world and part three can’t come quickly enough.