Ip Man 2: Legend of the Grandmaster is basically two kung fu movies fused into one. The first half of the film finds recently exiled Wing Chun master Ip Man (Donnie Yen, likably Mister Rogers–ish with his restraint and gentle smile) starting a school of martial arts in Hong Kong. Of course, the other martial arts schools dislike the newcomer and challenge him to a series of ridiculously entertaining battles, climaxing with a terrific fight between Yen and Sammo Hung, who even in the twilight years of his martial arts career still knows how to move like a ballet dancer when he needs to. This first half is a generic-but-appealing movie.
The second half of Ip Man 2 begins when a British boxer named Twister comes to Hong Kong and insults what he calls “Chinese boxing.” He takes on some martial artists and makes short, bloody work of them. Things escalate until finally Ip Man must fight the boxer in the championship bout to end all championship bouts. This half of the movie is the better of the two, simply because Darren Shahlavi’s Twister is an insanely racist caricature you want to see destroyed, an old-fashioned melodramatic villain.
Like the first outing in the series, Ip Man 2 is based on a true story (though an Ip Man fan who went to this movie with me noted that the “gravitas” of the first film failed to make an appearance in the sequel). It’s still full of the usual clichés you’ll find in a martial arts movie—the pregnant wife who goes into labor at the worst possible time, the brain-damaged sidekick who basks in the hero’s glow—but the thing Ip Man 2 has over the traditional biopic’s pitfalls is that when things get too schmaltzy, it launches into a huge set-piece-destroying kung fu battle. I’ll be goddamned if you don’t get your money’s worth out of this one. 
This is the Rocky IV of Chinese martial arts flicks. Twister is an idiotic caricature of a generic racist white guy with no redeeming values, and the plot focus on yet another stupid fantasy pissing contest in which Western imperialism faces off against Chinese patriotism/self determinacy in an idiotic fist fight between two people. Sure, a lot of people like Rocky IV, but I’m guessing most of these people can’t talk about it with a straight face either.
What annoys me most about this film is that it’s about a historical person who hasn’t been dead more than a few decades, yet they had to trump up a bunch of retarded shit like this to make a film about him. The first Ip Man film was melodramatic and over the top, but at least it wasn’t so utterly blunt and formulaic. I wish there was a more biographical film about Ip Man out there… or any real-life martial arts master for that matter, but I guess when it comes to martial arts hype and sentimentality always always takes precedence over realism.