Ip Man 2 (Wilson Yip)

Training for a boxer.

The first Ip Man film's extreme sentimentality and some added weight of cliche were very tolerable as the story was very compelling anyway. Ip Man 2 started with the same promise of a great narrative (backed by a wonderful recreation of 1950's Hong Kong), initially focusing on Yip Man's family's urban plight since the second World War ravaged Foshan. But then the countless cliches start to set in: The arrogant turned loyal apprentice, the bandit turned humorous sideshow Jin Shanzhao, and lastly, the Rocky Balboa-Apollo Creed-type relationship between Yip Man and Hung (played by the film's action director Sammo Hung).

The fight scenes, although there's that same old hard-hitting effect, lost its degree of believability, especially in the scene of Yip Man's test to carry on with his martial club. Kung-Fu Masters jumping from small chairs to small chairs to reach a table with dead-set accuracy (and with a physically recognizable use of some wires) and numerous other small doses of gravity defiance. And the performances of those Brit actors. They were too damn over-the-top and annoying that they ended up looking like caricature characters that were just inserted for the sake of single-minded propaganda.

This is not a scathing review. More of one founded with disappointments towards the film's plot elements and characterizations. And though I like it when master Yip meets a worthy opponent (the Japanese in the first film ate truck loads of chain punches) once in a while, I hate how they portrayed a great adversary as a trash-talking lunkhead. And they gave him a great fight. He almost defeated Yip Man, for crying out loud. Based on Master Yip's reputation as a transcendent figure of the martial arts world, the boxer's not worth it.

Amusing scene of a young Bruce Lee (they really got a child actor that looked like him) naively requesting a Wing Chun lesson from Yip Man, though.

FINAL RATING

Ali (Michael Mann)

A physically convincing Will Smith as Muhammad Ali.

Film Review Archive (date seen: November 15, 2010)

A good biopic for a 'great' icon (which of course connotes that it's not good enough), and although it runs in an epic 2 and a half hours, I still felt that it's too short to really capture his momentous spirit, both on mic, in ring, or alone. And with it climaxing and ending on the "Rumble in the Jungle" pay per view in Zaire, it has furthered the fact that with all its unrelenting build-up, the film has reached nowhere.

Though I think that the Ali-Foreman bout in Africa is a great way to end a biography film on a high, optimistic note, personally, I think it's better to show the latter days of Ali's career, and because I'm a Filipino, I'm a sucker for some cinematic depiction of the Araneta "Thrilla in Manila" fight. Scanning through mainstream African-American talents in Hollywood, Will Smith really is the perfect choice to play both the loud mouth exterior and the introspective interior. His physical stature's a given, and with Mr. Smith having some rap music background, his tongue can easily catch up with Ali's improvised, rhyming phonetics aimed to discredit his ring opponents.

"Ali", though thematically unsure especially at the last moments, is more than a boxing biopic film. It treads not just the literal and inner battles of Ali, but also his strong stance against racial inequality and his political viewpoints that led to his refusal of being drafted to the Vietnam War and the subsequent stripping of his title.

Before, as I've watched existing footages of Ali and his rambunctious antics, I always thought of him as an arrogant athlete not worthy of his title. But then, after watching this film, with his personal beliefs all exposed, in a time of racial tension and religious prejudice, he merely stood up for what he thought to be worth standing for. And almost 50 years later, Ali still is one of the ultimate representatives of a great, defiant spirit; that which would not falter in the face of an overwhelming adversity, and I'm not even talking about Frazier or Foreman. Many boxers have since imitated his flamboyance, but only a few of them knew what it was really all about.

FINAL RATING

The Fighter (David O. Russell)

Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale as Mickey Ward and Dickie Ecklund.

"The Fighter" is a boxing biopic that, unlike any other films of the said sports sub-genre that endlessly attempt to revolutionize fight sequences, is more concerned about Mickey Ward's (Mark Wahlberg) family's several dysfunctions than his boxing career and his professional fights. Dickie Ecklund, portrayed by Christian Bale in what may be one of the best performances of 2010 and arguably of his career, is Ward's brother and trainer whose uncontrolled carelessness and involvement with drugs made him one of the many reasons of their familial problems.

"The Fighter" is quite a riveting film that also depicts reality in small town America; a set of mundane existences that contains brawls, shouting contests and countless police arrests but always comes out as a human comedy showing folly as a way of life and the only mode of progression. Christian Bale's performance was so overwhelming in its screen presence that Wahlberg's portrayal of which should have been the central character of the film looked very, very pale in comparison. While Bale loses himself within the persona of Dickie Ecklund, Wahlberg is just Marky Mark being Marky Mark playing Mickey Ward.

Though the boxing sequences itself weren't really anything that evoke power, blood and in-ring claustrophobia ("Raging Bull" captured that perfectly), the slightly grainy HBO television broadcast visual look of the said sequences fully suggest of the film's realistic approach to the sport of boxing rather than a cinematic punch ballet ala "Cinderella Man" (though it's quite great).

I have no other problems with "The Fighter", I thought it was a great 2010 film filled with great performances (particularly by Melissa Leo and the bunch of actresses that played Mickey Ward's sisters). Maybe I just got too connected with the brothers' lives and their trying times outside the squared circle that when the screen went black with Ward's London victory succeeded by the obligatory title cards of "what happened next", I thought it should not have been the way it ended.

Ward's first encounter with the late Arturo Gatti would have given the film's thoroughly invested emotions a perfect fight companion and may also serve as the ultimate exclamation point to Mickey Ward's uphill climb story of an underdog making it big. Granted, the film has ended on a high note, but it never did try to reach the highest one there is.

FINAL RATING