The final chapter in the Ip Man saga belongs to Donnie Yen, who plays the aging Wing Chun master as a man trying to hold his family together. In Ip Man 4: The Finale, he travels to San Francisco in 1964 to resolve a disagreement between his student Bruce Lee and the city’s kung fu elders. At the same time, he is looking for a way forward for his son, Ip Ching, who has been behaving badly. The film puts less emphasis on grand spectacle and more on character development, and that choice works in certain moments, even though the wider story drags at times.
The film’s central conflict is personal and political at once. Ip Man arrives in San Francisco after his wife dies of throat cancer caused by years of smoking, and his son’s expulsion from school pushes him across the Pacific. Bruce Lee has opened a school that teaches non-Chinese students, written a book explaining Chinese martial arts in English, and upset the local martial arts community. The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, led by Tai Chi master Wan Zonghua, refuses to help Ip enroll Ching in an American school unless Ip can win a fight with Wan.
Trailer, via Well Go USA Entertainment.
Wan Zonghua’s Challenge
Wu Yue plays Wan Zonghua as a man who finds himself pulled between old ways and new ones. He leads the association and wields the power to give Ip the required referral letter, while at the same time he harbors deep suspicion toward Lee’s new ideas. When Ip saves his daughter Yonah, played by Vanda Margraf, from a racist attack carried out by a cheerleader named Becky along with her friends, Wan turns on him. He accuses Ip of using his daughter to gain the letter, and the film’s main physical clash is set for the Mid-Autumn Festival in Chinatown.
Ip’s struggle centers on the friction between his wish to shield his son and his duty to the people he abandoned. This marks a clear shift from the previous movies, which revolved around epic clashes between masters. The stakes may be reduced in scale, but the emotional weight remains just as heavy.
The San Francisco Setting
San Francisco serves as more than a backdrop. The city is divided between those who embrace Lee’s new path and those who reject it. The film captures the racism faced by Chinese immigrants in America, with Becky and her friends representing the worst of white hostility. Ip’s intervention in Yonah’s fight is a small act of defiance, and it costs him the support of Wan.
The movie’s treatment of race is inconsistent. Certain scenes carry real weight, especially when Ip tells Wan that Yonah was right to defend herself. Other moments come across as mere background detail, with the film acknowledging historical prejudice without delving into it. The picture succeeds most when it allows its characters room to develop, and falters whenever it resorts to broad, sweeping gestures.
Bruce Lee’s Presence
The movie follows Danny Chan as Bruce Lee, a young instructor who has moved beyond the boundaries of customary deference. He is the very cause of Wan’s opposition to Ip, and his character pushes the story ahead. The film dedicates little attention to Lee himself, yet his weight shapes every scene tied to the association. Ip’s choice to aid his son stands at odds with his responsibility toward his student.
The relationship between the two men is tender and complicated. Ip sees in Lee the future he wants for his son, while also fearing that Lee’s ambition will tear the family apart. The film’s final act brings these threads together, though the resolution feels rushed.
The Earthquake Interruption
An earthquake breaks up the fight between Ip and Wan, a trick the series keeps returning to. It serves as a story pause, letting the film move away from fighting and toward talking instead. This delay lets Wan name the Mid-Autumn Festival as the date for the rematch, and it gives the movie space to look at how its people feel between action scenes.
It is the festival that reaches its peak. The themes of Wan’s challenge force Ip to choose between his own pride and the well-being of his son. The fight is not the centerpiece of the film, but it is the moment where the film converges here.
The Cameo Flashback
A flashback sequence built from archive footage brings together three actors who play figures tied to earlier films in the series: Lynn Hung takes on the part of Cheung Wing-sing, Ip Man’s deceased wife; Gordon Lam as Li Chiu, a police officer from Foshan; Huang Xiaoming as Wong Leung, Ip Man’s first student; Sammo Hung plays the late Hung Ga master Hung Chun-nam, an asthmatic practitioner; and Mike Tyson appears as Frank, an American property developer. Their appearances give the film a link to its predecessors, offering audiences a sense of connection across the whole series.
The cameo sequence serves as a pleasant addition rather than an essential element of the story. It does nothing to move the plot forward, yet it enriches the universe of the films.
The Verdict
Ip Man 4: The Finale is a solid, if uneven, conclusion to the series. The film’s emphasis on character over spectacle is a welcome change, and Donnie Yen’s performance remains strong. The mid-point earthquake is a clever device, and the final fight delivers on the promise of the earlier setup.
The story stumbles because it tries to juggle three separate threads at once without giving any of them enough room to breathe. The racism subplot, the family drama, and the master rivalry all fight for attention, and none of them are allowed to develop fully. This struggle for focus drags down the pacing throughout.
What makes this film work is not spectacle but stillness. The dialogue between Ip and Fat Bo, the back-and-forth between Ip and Wan, and the quiet time spent with his son all land with genuine force. These are the scenes that give the movie its reason for being.
What drags down the film are its broad brushstrokes. Its portrayal of racism lacks depth, and the resolution of the Wan conflict feels hurried. Viewers unfamiliar with the earlier installments will find themselves frustrated by how much it relies on those predecessors.
Key Facts
– Runtime: 105 minutes
– Director: Wilson Yip
– Writers: Jill Leung Lai-Yin, Hiroshi Fukazawa, Edmond Wong, Chan Tai-Lee
– Release date: 20 December 2019
- The earthquake interruption is the film’s best structural choice.
- The Wan challenge gives the film its emotional core.
- The flashback archive footage is a nice bonus for fans.
- The family drama between Ip and his son is the film’s strongest thread.
- The racism subplot is the film’s weakest element.
Ip Man 4: The Finale is a worthy but flawed end to the saga. It honors the legacy of the series while trying to move beyond it, and it mostly succeeds.
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