IP MAN 4: THE FINALE thankfully ends the series on a high and is a step up from the third film. I've enjoyed all of them - including the MAX ZHANG spin-off - so I was pleased to see this carried on the trend of having plenty of excellent martial arts action choreographed by the peerless Yuen Woo-ping, who is obviously enjoying himself here. Donnie Yen plays an older and more formal character than before, with the action transported to San Francisco for some traditional racial tension. You get the sense that the story is being made up to fit the fight scenes, but that's okay when the action is so good. Some of the big brawlers battling it out here including Chris Collins, Mark Strange, and my current favourite martial arts actor, the brawny Scott Adkins who really delivers at the climax.

For the fourth and final film in the series of Ip Man movies, this one had an anti-climactic feel to it. What should have felt like a new chapter in the Ip Man legacy by having him come to America, turned into a treatment of racism against Chinese citizens in San Francisco where the main story takes place. As in the second installment of the series, Ip Man (Donnie Yen) must satisfy the martial arts masters of this new jurisdiction in order to get his son enrolled in an American school. In "Ip Man 2", he had to placate and pay tribute to a local gang lord before being allowed to open his own training school.

Martial arts fighting action seems to take a decided back seat in this story as well. There are some to be sure, but they don't have the same intensity as the first two films. The backdrop to Master Ip's mission involves the local grand masters upset with his former student Bruce Lee, who has earned their ire by training Americans and writing an instructional book on Wing Chun in English. Lee is portrayed by Danny Kwok-Kwan Chan, in a returning role from "Ip Man 3". Given that circumstance, one would think the character of Lee would have held more prominence in the story, but he shows up a couple of times and leaves unheralded before the film is over.

The biggest eye opener for this viewer was that for all his expertise in martial arts and as a role model for fitness buffs, Master Ip apparently was a heavy smoker, diagnosed with cancer early in the story. I don't believe that ever came up in the earlier movies, and just shocked the heck out of me. It makes you wonder how he could have had the stamina to endure the physicality of his sport. The cancer angle has Ip Man regaining the attention and love of his estranged son Ching (He Ye),but for all that, we never do learn whether or not the youth ever returned to America with his father.

The 2019 addition to the "Ip Man" franchise is definitely well-worth taking the time to sit down and watch, especially if you have seen the previous movies that also had Donnie Yen in the role as Master Ip Man.

The continuation of the storyline is good, and I will say that the movie definitely is entertaining, and it has a good amount of mixture of genres, ranging from drama to action - of course, with a heavy focus on the latter, naturally.

I will say that "Ip Man 4: The Finale" has some of the most hard-pounding and brutal of fight scenes in the entire franchise. And those alone make it well-worth taking the time to sit down to watch this movie.

Donnie Yen returns to don the mantle of Ip Man, which he has done quite well in the previous movies. And he does so once more again here in the fourth movie.

I am rating "Ip Man 4: The Finale" a well deserving seven out of ten stars, because the storyline was good, the character development was good, and the acting was good. But most importantly, the fighting was good.