They're unambiguously evil: all greased hair, loud clothes and sneering attitude, and they aren't above menacing small children in their attempts to take over a school whose location makes it irresistible to bad guys, including boss and 'foreign devil' (as he's repeatedly called) Frank, played by Mike Tyson. The film finds the titular martial-arts master and all-around nice guy (he spends much of the third act eschewing fights and training so he can spend quality time with his dying wife) taking on a gang of sneering bad guys in 1959 Hong Kong who suggest a kung fu version of West Side Story's Sharks and Jets, minus the Stephen Sondheim/Leonard Bernstein songs and elaborate dance choreography. Star Donnie Yen publicly stated his eagerness to retire the real-life character of Ip Man, the legendary Wing Chun master best known to Westerners as the man who taught Bruce Lee, after 2010's Ip Man 2, but money can be a powerful motivator, and the now fiftysomething Yen returns to the role in Ip Man 3. The same cannot be said of action movies, and though 2008's Ip Man began as a biographical film taking numerous liberties with its subject's life, it was successful enough to launch a mid-level franchise.

Biographical films tend not to be followed by sequels, as evidenced by the appalling lack of follow-ups to Gandhi, Schindler's List and Lincoln.

Ip man 3 full movie