Film

Ip Man

Donnie Yen plays Ip Man as a modest, devastatingly capable Foshan master whose comfortable life gets flattened by the Japanese occupation. It's a biopic built almost entirely out of fight scenes, but they're extraordinary ones — Sammo Hung's choreography turns Wing Chun into something clean, fast and thrillingly matter-of-fact. Watch it for the sense of a quiet man being pushed, reluctantly, toward becoming a legend.

TMDb rating7.8

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Ip Man 22010no page yet

The direct sequel, with Yen and the same team pushing the fights bigger and the politics louder — colonial Hong Kong instead of occupied Foshan, and a rooftop showdown that's become genre-famous.

But It leans harder into nationalist crowd-pleasing than the first film, and subtlety takes a back seat to spectacle.

Fearless2006no page yet

Jet Li's own martial-arts-master-biopic, covering real fighter Huo Yuanjia with the same mix of formal combat, national pride and quiet philosophy that makes Ip Man work so well.

But The redemption arc is fairly conventional, and some of the CGI-assisted fight work has aged less gracefully than Yen's.

Once Upon a Time in China1991

Tsui Hark and Jet Li's operatic take on folk hero Wong Fei-hung — bigger, wilder, more colourful than Ip Man, but built from the same DNA of a real master resisting foreign encroachment.

But The tone swings between comedy and melodrama more freely than modern audiences might expect from this genre.

Once Upon a Time in China poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Be Water2020no page yet

Ip Man trained the man this film is about — you're watching the next chapter of the same lineage, told in a completely different register: nonfiction, personal, political.

An ESPN documentary about Bruce Lee — Ip Man's most famous real student — tracing how a Wing Chun kid from Hong Kong became a global icon while fighting American racism.

But It's a documentary with no fight choreography to speak of; if you came for spectacle, this is interviews and archival footage instead.

More like this (8)

The Grandmaster2013

Wong Kar-wai's own, much stranger version of the Ip Man story — gorgeous, elliptical, more interested in memory and loss than in linear biography or crowd-pleasing fights.

But It's slow, fragmented and emotionally oblique; if you wanted more of Yen's Ip Man, this won't give it to you.

The Grandmaster poster

SPL: Kill Zone2005no page yet

The film that reinvented Donnie Yen as a serious action star just before Ip Man — brutal, grounded Hong Kong crime choreography with real stakes and real grief underneath it.

But It's much darker and bleaker than Ip Man, with a tragic streak that doesn't offer the same uplift.

Enter the Dragon1973

The granddaddy of the genre — Bruce Lee's only major Hollywood production, and the reason kung fu cinema became a global obsession in the first place.

But The pacing and dialogue feel dated, and the plot is thinner than anything modern audiences are used to.

Enter the Dragon poster

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon2000

Wire-fu at its most beautiful and melancholy, with fight choreography that turns combat into something closer to dance, and a story about honour, restraint and desire.

But It's far more romantic and dreamlike than Ip Man's grounded realism, which can feel like a tonal mismatch if you wanted more grit.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon poster

Warrior2011

An MMA-era underdog story with the same DNA of discipline and quiet suffering, following two estranged brothers toward a tournament that will force a reckoning.

But It's Western, contemporary and mixed-martial-arts rather than traditional kung fu, so the flavour is quite different.

Warrior poster

The Man from Nowhere2010

A quiet, withdrawn man forced to reveal a terrifying set of skills to protect someone he loves — Korean action cinema doing its own devastating version of the reluctant-master story.

But It's much more violent and vengeance-driven, with none of Ip Man's restraint or moral gentleness.

The Man from Nowhere poster

Seven Samurai1954

Same engine as Ip Man — a skilled, humble master drawn into violence to protect ordinary people — but built decades earlier, in a different country, without a single Wing Chun punch.

Kurosawa's masterpiece about a reluctant warrior code recruited to defend a community from outside threat — patient, humane, and the ancestor of nearly every honour-bound-fighter film since.

But It's three and a half hours, in black and white, and moves at a completely different pace than anything with Donnie Yen in it.

Seven Samurai poster

Kung Fu Hustle2004

It's the same kung-fu-legend universe and era as Ip Man, filtered through farce instead of solemnity — proof the genre can be trashy and gleeful without losing its soul.

Stephen Chow's anarchic slapstick comedy set in a very similar world of 1930s-40s Chinese street gangs and secret martial masters — same mythology, played entirely for laughs.

But It's broad, cartoonish and self-aware in a way that's the polar opposite of Ip Man's earnestness — pure comic spectacle rather than drama.

Kung Fu Hustle poster

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Recommended by

Kung Fu Hustle, The Grandmaster, The Furious, Enter the Dragon, Project A, Drunken Master, Triple Threat, The Night Comes For Us, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Ong-Bak, Once Upon a Time in China