Ip Man: The Awakening Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		1.5

Ip Man: The Awakening Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 21, 2022

If I might be permitted to jokingly paraphrase a famous maxim that separates Mankind into categories, there are two types of people in the world, those who think we need another Ip Man movie, and those who are still sane. There has been such a patently bizarre number of films (ostensibly) about Ip Man through the years that it's hard to keep track, but a lot of them have passed through my review queue, making me perhaps more sensitive to the onslaught than the casual fan of martial arts heroes. I listed quite a few of the Ip Man efforts in my Ip Man 4: The Finale Blu-ray review, in comments about a film that brought Donnie Yen back to portray the icon one last (?) time, in a story that was obviously beyond fictionalized, as has been the case with many Ip Man properties. In fact, I closed that review with this (hopefully obviously joking) comment: "Considering how divorced from the actual historical record this film apparently is, Ip Man 4: The Finale could have just as easily sent Ip Man into space to battle Moon Monsters a la some old Ray Harryhausen effort, and heaven knows, that may be the next Ip Man entry coming down the pike". At least that prognostication turns out to be incorrect in Ip Man: The Awakening, but one might be tempted to joke further that not only does Ip Man not get to our nearest natural satellite, but that Ip Man: The Awakening is almost depressingly earthbound.

Ip Man: The Awakening is from Well Go USA's streaming service Hi-Yah!, and it is very much like a standard made for television movie, with less than fulsome production values, a cartoonish villain, and a story that supposedly explores the early life of Ip Man (Miu Tse) in Hong Kong, but which is once again pretty obviously not tethered to the historical record in any meaningful way. There are a number of odd presentational choices made in the film, highlighted by such scenes as an early vignette documenting a bunch of young men riding bikes through the city, which is edited to include slow motion elements, I guess to evoke memories of, I don't know, Chariots of Fire (? again), replete with pulsing orchestral music, but which oddly also includes a bunch of physical shtick including one bicyclist repeatedly running into people. Unfortunately, this is just the tip of an inartful iceberg, and as minor as this passing scene is, it points up a general inconsistency in tone that the film repeatedly is hobbled by.

Even before that scene, there are several screens of Chinese characters that appear without subtitles as the film opens, and I have to assume they're not the credits, since those come later. Is there some salient information to be gleaned from this text? What's so decidedly odd about even this aspect is how long it goes on for, which may indicate there was quite a bit of information to be imparted. One way or the other, the basic storyline posits Ip Man "interrupting" criminal activity in Hong Kong spearheaded by a villain named Mr. Stark (Sergio De Ieso), who seems to be the personification of evil "Western" interloping into Chinese culture, and who is obviously a bad guy because he's always smoking a cigar.

Human trafficking enters the fray, which allows for a number of damsels in distress, and there are passing attempts to at least allude to the socioeconomic and political struggles of the period, but the basic story is so far removed from reality that it hardly matters. Even the action scenes in this film never really generate a ton of energy, and that may be the most disappointing thing about Ip Man: The Awakening.

Ip Man: The Awakening Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ip Man: The Awakening is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. The closing credits are, like the opening text cards, in Chinese, and so I couldn't glean any technical information, and the IMDb is similarly (and unsurprisingly) silent, but this is a competent digital capture that I am assuming had a 2K DI. Detail levels are often excellent throughout the presentation, with fine detail on fabrics and facial features typically very precise looking. The palette is often almost candy colored, and pops quite appealingly. Long swaths of the film are bathed in almost cobalt blues, as can be seen in a couple of the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review, and some other scenes have been graded more toward greens and/or yellows, and at times detail levels can falter a bit as a result. There are some minor incidences of banding, as can sometimes be the case with Well Go USA's releases.

Ip Man: The Awakening Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Ip Man: The Awakening features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks in either Mandarin or English, but even the English track shows that the putative "Westerner" in the film was not speaking English during the shoot, as evidenced by the mismatch between his lip movements and the dialogue being spoken. Both tracks didn't reveal any significant differences to my ears in terms of mix, other than the language. As mentioned above in the main body of the review, the score seems almost deliberately at odds with what's being presented on screen at times, but fidelity is fine and the score does inhabit the surround channels noticeably. The fight scenes also provide some good if trite effects which are at least intermittently immersive. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Ip Man: The Awakening Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (HD; 1:34)

Note: As tends to be the case with Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, the disc has been authored to automatically move on to trailers for other Well Go USA releases after the trailer for this film plays. Those trailers for other Well Go USA releases also play automatically at disc boot up.

Ip Man: The Awakening Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This film might have been more accurately titled, Ip Man: Wake Up!, since my hunch is even diehard martial arts films fans in general and lovers of Ip Man in particular are going to find this film a colossal bore. Technical merits are solid for those who may be considering making a purchase.