It’s important to lay out the necessary groundwork of the Ipsploitation trend to look at Ip Man: Kung Fu Master and just what an oddity it is as a film. The story reads as such: Ip Man is now a captain of the Foshan police force. When the head of the Axe Gang is wanted for murder, Ip Man uncovers a much larger conspiracy that involves the Japanese military, corrupt police, and opium smuggling all while his wife is about to give birth to their first child and he is framed for murder. This pushes him to work outside of the law, donning a black mask, and teaming up with the daughter of the Axe Gang leader and his lost, drunken uncle to take on the system and villains. This all results in a politicized martial arts match between him and a Japanese military general.
Confused by the synopsis? Of course. This is a film that hardly has anything to do with Ip Man, even as a character, and everything to do with how the Chinese film industry is using his name to a) make money b) as jingoistic propaganda. Neither of these things is new to the exploitation of the character at this point, but Kung Fu Master seems especially obvious at times. Enough so that after the film finished, I am very tempted to make the claim that it was a different script that was converted into an Ip Man film late in the process. I don’t know if that’s true, but it feels like it. Some of the details of the character fall inline with his name, his use of Wing Chun, his life in Foshan, and the birth of his first child, along with his brief stint as a police captain. Other elements seem completely out of sync. The arrival of his drunken uncle and the narrative choice to have him wear a black outfit and mask and fight crime as a late-night vigilante that is called The Black Knight. The latter part falls more in line with Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen than it does with an Ip Man film. Yet, here it is. It’s these inconsistencies that make the plotting reek of Ipsploitation conversion rather than something truly original. Granted, many of these elements work if the viewer, particularly those more familiar with other Ip Man films, puts expectations aside.